TITLE: EuPRAXIA - A European Accelerator Project for Innovation and Science

ABSTRACT: EuPRAXIA (European Plasma Research Accelerator with eXcellence In Applications) is a collaborative project that was formed in 2015 and is implementing the first research infrastructure based on innovative plasma accelerator technology. The new plasma accelerators offer accelerating fields that are 100-1000 times higher than the fields presently possible in RF cavities. The miniaturised, sub-mm size of plasma structures open the path to unique scientific applications, in particular enabling highly compact sources of photons and particles with significantly improved spatial and temporal resolution. EuPRAXIA has been selected for the Roadmap of the European Strategy Forum for Research Infrastructures (ESFRI) in December 2021, based on its 2019 Conceptual Design Report, an ESFRI application document and letters of government support. The project is now in its Preparatory Phase, approved and funded by the European Union, UKRI and Switzerland. It is supported by a consortium of more than 50 institutes, including the Queen`s University Belfast, and foresees two main construction sites. One site is focused on beam-driven plasma acceleration (PWFA) at the Laboratori Nazionali di Frascati (INFN-LNF) in Italy. This site has already received construction funding from the Italian government. The second site will be based on laser-driven plasma acceleration (LWFA) with candidate sites in Czech Republic, United Kingdom and Italy. Several centres of excellence will support both construction sites. Major technical building blocks of EuPRAXIA involve advanced photo injectors, X band RF technology, high power lasers, plasma accelerators, high resolution instrumentation and application beamlines. The EuPRAXIA concept will be presented and target parameters introduced. The foreseen EuPRAXIA user applications and their specific advantages will be discussed. The successful demonstration of FEL lasing with plasma accelerated electron beams, achieved both in Shanghai, China, and in Frascati, Italy, will be shown. Finally, the next steps and the path to full implementation will be described.  

BIOGRAPHY: Ralph Assmann has obtained his doctorate in Physics from the Ludwig-Maximilians-University in Munich. His PhD research was performed at the Max Planck Institute for Physics in Munich and at CERN in the ALEPH experiment on the mass of the Z boson, spin polarized particle beams and precise energy calibration. He then spent almost 4 years as research associate and staff at Stanford University and SLAC, where he worked on the SLC, PEP-2 and NLC colliders on topics covering operation, modelling and design. As one of the Primary Investigators he was a key figure in the E-157 experiment, the first plasma acceleration experiment at SLAC and a collaboration with UCLA, USC and LBNL. For the next 15 years he worked at CERN in leading roles on the LEP and LHC colliders, including leadership of the construction project for the two LHC collimation insertions. He was an LHC machine coordinator in run I of the LHC operation, that led to the discovery of the Higgs boson in 2012. At CERN he also contributed to the approval of the AWAKE plasma acceleration experiment. In Summer 2012 he moved as Leading Scientist for Accelerator R&D to DESY, where he is performing his research on new, compact accelerators since then. He was awarded an ERC synergy grant in 2014. Dr. Assmann is presently the Chair of the Accelerator Group in the European Physical Society, the coordinator of the EuPRAXIA ESFRI project, leader of several European funding grants and coordinator of the European Network for Novel Accelerators. As part of his work for EuPRAXIA he is presently spending half of his time at the INFN Frascati National Laboratory in Rome, Italy, the other half at DESY in Hamburg, Germany.