Plasma-based accelerators use wakefields driven in plasma to accelerate particles (e-/e+) with large gradient (>1GeV/m). In AWAKE, a long proton bunch (6-12 cm) self-modulates in a 10 m-long plasma with electron density in the 10^14-10^15/cm^3 range into a train of micro-bunches shorter than, and separated by the wakefields period. The train resonantly drives wakefields to large amplitude.
Low energy electrons can be externally injected and accelerated to GeV energies.
We will introduce AWAKE and its experimental setup. We will show experimental results in beam plasma interaction physics, including self-modulation of the proton bunch, seeding and the resulting stability of the process, etc. We will show acceleration results with energy gain from about 19 MeV to 2 GeV. We will briefly describe future experiments and possible applications of the acceleration scheme.