The SL_COMB experiment aims at realizing an accelerated beam by the interaction of charged particles with a ionized plasma.
A so-called driver beam excites a plasma wave giving its energy to the plasma. After the driver beam a so-called witness beam is injected in the excited plasma with the appropriate phase and is accelerated by the plasma waves.
This accelerator technique has been already successfully proven in the past. The accelerating gradient of a plasma accelerator machine is at least two order of magnitude bigger than in conventional machines. The possibility to achieve such big accelerating gradients will allow to significantly reduce accellerator machine dimensions with obvious advantages in many applications from high energy physics, to material science and medical applications.
The main goal of the SL_COMB collaboration is to provide plasma based acceleration with a beam quality comparable to conventional acceleration techniques. In particular, the Tor Vergata group is involved in the design of the machine diagnostic system.