Progress Toward E-157: A 1 GeV Plasma Wakefield Accelerator

A plasma based wakefield acceleration (PWFA) experiment, scheduled to run this summer, will accelerate parts of a 28.5 GeV bunch from the SLAC linac by up to 1 GeV over a length of 1 meter. A single 28.5 GeV bunch will both induce the wakefields in the one meter long plasma and witness the resulting acceleration fields. The experiment will explore and further develop the techniques that are needed to apply high-gradient PWFA to large scale accelerators. This paper summarizes the goals of the first round of experiments as well as the status of the individual components: construction and diagnosis of the homogeneous lithium oven plasma source and associated ionization laser, commissioning of the electron beam, simulated performance of the electron beam energy measurement, and first PIC simulations of the full meter long experiment