The European project TWAC (Terahertz Wave Accelerating Cavity) aims to build a prototype paving the way for a compact low-energy, high-peak current electron accelerator, highly sought after for applications in the fields of research, medicine and industry. This project, funded by the EIC Pathfinder Open 2021 of the Horizon Europe program for a period of 4 years, started in April 2022.
This project is part of accelerator physics, a multidisciplinary field: particle physics, lasers, optics, biology, detection, instrumentation... The TWAC project, launched in 2022, brings together all the different facets of accelerator physics and aims to obtain innovative but risky results. It relies on a strong synergy between several research institutes and European companies, with expertise in the different fields that must be combined to achieve its ambitious objective: high power lasers, nonlinear optics, accelerator physics and electron beam diagnostics.
The prototype of the accelerator will be hosted at IJCLab, under the coordination of Christelle Bruni (BIMP Team, Pôle Physique des Accélérateurs). IJCLab is leading the development of the ZITA accelerator structure and the commissioning of the prototype. The THz source which will feed the ZITA is developed by the University of Pécs (Hungary). DESY (Germany) and PhLAM (France) are leading the development of diagnostics for electron bunch duration and THz source, respectively. Industrial partners ITEOX (France) and RadiaBeam Europe (Switzerland) will carry out investigations on the industrialization potential of the accelerator prototype developed within TWAC.
The TWAC team of IJCLab: Marie Amiens, Mohammed Ben abdilah, Christelle Bruni, Kevin Cassou, Jean-Noël Cayla, Vincent Chaumat, Philippe Gauron, Alexandre Gonnin, Hayg Guler, Guillaume Martinet, Maher Omeich, Manon Paris, Patrick Puzo, Viktor Soskov et la Plateforme laserix.