A Dielectric Disk Accelerator (DDA) is a metallic accelerating structure loaded with dielectric disks to increase coupling between cells, thus high group velocity, while still maintaining a high shunt impedance. This is crucial for achieving high efficiency high gradient acceleration in the short rf pulse acceleration regime. Research of these structures has produced traveling wave structures that are powered by very short (~9 ns), very high power (400 MW) RF pulses using two beam acceleration to produce these pulses. In testing, these structures have withstood more than 320 MW of power and produced accelerating gradients of over 100 MV/m. The next step of testing these structures will use a more conventional, klystron power source. A new standing wave DDA structure is being fabricated for testing on the Nextef2 test stand at KEK. Simulation results of this structure show that at 50 MW of input power, the DDA produces a 457 MV/m gradient. It also has a large shunt impedance of 160 MΩ/m and an r/Q of 21.6 kΩ/m. Cold testing of this structure will be conducted July 2024 with high power testing to be done in August.

A Dielectric Disk Accelerator (DDA) is a metallic accelerating structure loaded with dielectric disks to increase coupling between cells, thus high group velocity, while still maintaining a high shunt impedance. This is crucial for achieving high efficiency high gradient acceleration in the short rf pulse acceleration regime. Research of these structures has produced traveling wave structures that are powered by very short (~9 ns), very high power (400 MW) RF pulses using two beam acceleration to produce these pulses. In testing, these structures have withstood more than 320 MW of power and produced accelerating gradients of over 100 MV/m. The next step of testing these structures will use a more conventional, klystron power source. A new standing wave DDA structure is being fabricated for testing on the Nextef2 test stand at KEK. Simulation results of this structure show that at 50 MW of input power, the DDA produces a 457 MV/m gradient. It also has a large shunt impedance of 160 MΩ/m and an r/Q of 21.6 kΩ/m. Cold testing of this structure will be conducted July 2024 with high power testing to be done in August.

Since its inception, the field of Advanced Accelerators has regarded future particle-physics colliders as the ultimate application of > 1 GV/m accelerator technology [1]. Over the last decades, rapid experimental and theoretical progress [2,3,4] drove a conceptual evolution of potential future colliders based on Wakefield Accelerator (WFA) technology. The recent P5 Report [5] calls for “vigorous R&D toward a cost-effective 10 TeV pCM collider based on proton, muon, or possible wakefield technologies.” Specifically, the P5 Report requests “the delivery of an end-to-end design concept, including cost scales, with self-consistent parameters throughout.” This presentation will outline the opportunities, requirements, and challenges for a 10 TeV WFA collider and will introduce a community-driven design study based on working groups and performance metrics including a timeline with deliverables.

Free-electron lasers (FELs) send an accelerated electron beam through a magnetic undulator to provide a source of continuously tunable, short (10s of fs), high-peak power (GW-scale) radiation. FELs have found many applications, particularly in the infrared, extreme ultraviolet (EUV) and X-ray regimes. However, current EUV and X-ray FELs are large (100s of m) and expensive facilities, limiting the accessibility of these sources. In this work, we present FEL simulations driven by a compact accelerator combining high-gradient short pulse two-beam wakefield accelerators [1] and short-period superconducting undulators [2]. An FEL demo based on a GeV-scale accelerator is discussed as a driver for a water-window ( 2.3-4.4 nm) FEL with a ≈ 50 m length. Such a proof-of-principle integrated facility would serve the dual purpose of supporting user-based research in the water-window regime, and providing a proving ground for these new technologies to later be applied to shorter wavelength FELs. Here, we present early design and simulation efforts with a focus on FEL-process modeling.

Next-generation accelerator concepts, which hinge on the precise shaping of beam distributions, demand equally precise diagnostic methods capable of reconstructing beam distributions within 6-dimensional position-momentum spaces. However, the characterization of intricate features within 6-dimensional beam distributions using current diagnostic techniques necessitates a substantial number of measurements, using many hours of valuable beam time. Novel phase space reconstruction techniques are needed to reduce the number of measurements required to reconstruct detailed, high-dimensional beam features in order to resolve complex beam phenomena, and as feedback in precision beam shaping applications. In this study, we present a novel approach to reconstructing detailed 6-dimensional phase space distributions from experimental measurements using generative machine learning and differentiable beam dynamics simulations. We demonstrate that this approach can be used to resolve 6-dimensional phase space distributions from scratch, using basic beam manipulations and as few as 20 2-dimensional measurements of the beam profile. We also demonstrate an application of the reconstruction method in an experimental setting at the Argonne Wakefield Accelerator, where it is able to reconstruct the beam distribution and accurately predict previously unseen measurements 75x faster than previous methods.