Efficient accelerator afterburner design based on plasma wakefield acceleration

Recent plasma wakefield acceleration (PWFA) experiment using short ($\sim$100fs), high peak current ($>$10KA) electron beam as wakefield driver has demonstrated sustained acceleration gradient of $\sim$50GeV/m over 85 cm. The rapid progress of PWFA experiments has attracted interests regarding the possibility of making an ``afterburner'' for a linear collider. In the ``afterburner'' concept, electron acceleration is achieved by placing a trailing electron beam into the wakefield (either by beam splitting or external injection) to extract energy deposited in the plasma wave wake. Several important aspects of the ``afterburner'' design in the blow-out regime, such as wakefield generation, efficient beam loading and hosing instability have been investigated theoretically. These relevant physics will have great impact on the beam quality of a possible ``afterburner'' design. A multi-stage ``afterburner'' design with 25GeV energy gain in each stage is explored numerically with a 3D quasi-static code QuickPIC. Parameters are suggested for a 0.5 TeV PWFA afterburner with this design and simulation result will be presented.