Plasma acceleration experiments at DESY Zeuthen

Plasma acceleration has attracted a lot of attention in the past decade due to successful acceleration of electrons with gradients exceeding those of conventional accelerator technology by orders of magnitude. An experimental programme was started at the Photoinjector Test Facility, DESY Zeuthen (PITZ), to study aspects of the acceleration mechanisms in beam-driven plasma wakes. Original goals were the investigation of the self-modulation instability and the acceleration of particles with high ratios between energy gain of accelerated and energy loss of wake-driving particles. The goals were later on extended by studies on other wakefield acceleration mechanisms and laboratory studies of acceleration mechanisms in space plasmas as a source of PeV-scale cosmic ray particles. A brief overview of the experiments including experimental results, simulations and plans for future studies is presented.