Plasma acceleration with external injection at SINBAD

SINBAD (Short INnovative Bunches and Accelerators at DESY) is a proposed dedicated accelerator research and development facility at DESY where amongst other topics laser-driven wakefield acceleration (LWFA) with external injection of ultra-short bunches will be exploited. At SINBAD we aim to demonstrate externally-injected bunch acceleration inside a plasma wake with minimal degradation of its energy spread and emittance at low plasma densities. To minimise induced energy spread, the bunch should occupy a small fraction of the plasma wavelength and has to be longitudinally synchronised with the laser driver to high accuracy. To avoid emittance growth the transport lattice for the incoming beam has to be matched to the intrinsic beta-function of the plasma. We present a preparatory feasibility study for future plasma experiments at SINBAD using simulations with the particle-in-cell code OSIRIS [1].