- Loisch, Gregor;
- Asova, Galina;
- Boonpornprasert, Prach;
- Brinkmann, Reinhard;
- Chen, Ye;
- Engel, Johannes;
- Good, James;
- Gross, Matthias;
- Grüner, Florian;
- Huck, Holger;
- Kalantaryan, Davit;
- Krasilnikov, Mikhail;
- Lishilin, Osip;
- de la Ossa, Alberto Martinez;
- Mehrling, Timon J;
- Melkumyan, David;
- Oppelt, Anne;
- Osterhoff, Jens;
- Qian, Houjun;
- Renier, Yves;
- Stephan, Frank;
- Tenholt, Carmen;
- Wohlfarth, Valentin;
- Zhao, Quantang
Particle-beam-driven plasma wakefield acceleration (PWFA) enables various novel high-gradient techniques for powering future compact light-source and high-energy physics applications. Here, a driving particle bunch excites a wakefield response in a plasma medium, which may rapidly accelerate a trailing witness beam. In this Letter, we present the measurement of ratios of acceleration of the witness bunch to deceleration of the driver bunch, the so-called transformer ratio, significantly exceeding the fundamental theoretical and thus far experimental limit of 2 in a PWFA. An electron bunch with ramped current profile was utilized to accelerate a witness bunch with a transformer ratio of 4.6_{-0.7}^{+2.2} in a plasma with length ∼10 cm, also demonstrating stable transport of driver bunches with lengths on the order of the plasma wavelength.