FLASHForward – beam-driven wakefield acceleration at FLASH

FLASHForward, at the FLASH facility at DESY in Hamburg, will be a dedicated beam line for development and study of state of the art beam-driven plasma wakefield accelerators (PWFAs). Through the use of the FLASH free-electron-laser quality drive beam, its 30 fs-level synchronisation to high-intensity lasers and the utilization of hydrogen plasma cells, this facility will be able to study various internal and external particle-injection methods. The planned PWFA experiments are predicted to produce electron beams with 100 nm-level uncorrelated normalized emittances and kA currents. In addition, drive bunches with triangularly shaped current profiles could produce transformer ratios of up to six. In this presentation, we will present the current status of the phase I and phase II conceptual designs and the state of the planned experimental program, including simulation results. The experimental program is expected to start in late 2015