---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Project: B18 Title: FLASHForward - investigating the stability of a plasma wakefield accelerator DESY group: FLASHForward Type: Online project Duration: 19th july - 10th sep 2021 Description: High electric fields in excited plasma wakes make them an attractive medium for electron bunch acceleration with broad applicability to industry, medicine, as well as research facilities such as particle colliders and free-electron lasers. The FLASHForward experiment is an electron-beam-driven plasma-wakefield accelerator, the purpose of which it is to study the beam-plasma interaction as a means to control the acceleration process. A crucial parameter for optimised and efficient acceleration is the stability and reproducibility of the system. In this project the sensitivity of the acceleration process to various experimental parameters will be investigated by setting up realistic beam-tracking and particle-in-cell simulations. The final goal of the project will be to test the efficacy of the simulation packages by comparing their results to experimental data from FLASHForward. Special Qualifications expected: ideally python or C++ scripting ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------