A novel Rb vapor plasma source for plasma wakefield accelerators

We describe a novel plasma source developed at the Max Planck Institute for Physics that will be used for a proton driven plasma wakefield accelerator experiment at CERN. Rubidium vapor is confined in a 10 meter -long, 4 cm diameter, oil-heated stainless steel pipe. A laser pulse tunnel ionizes the vapor forming a 10-meter long, ~1mm radius plasma with a range of densities around ~1015cm−3. Access to the source is provided using custom manufactured fast valves. The source is designed to produce a plasma with a density uniformity of at least ~0.2% during the beam-plasma interaction.