We show experimentally that the self-modulation instability of a long 400 GeV proton bunch can be seeded by a preceding short 18 MeV electron bunch. We prove that the timing of the self-modulation is reproducible from event to event, and that it is controlled by the timing of the seed bunch.We show that the amplitude of the seed wakefields depends on the parameters of the seed electron bunch,...
We study experimentally hosing [1] of a long proton bunch in plasma in AWAKE. We induce this process with misalignment between the trajectories of a preceding short electron bunch and that of the proton bunch. We observe hosing as transverse oscillation of the proton bunch centroid position in the plane of misalignment at the period of the wakefields. Self-modulation (SM) occurs in the...
The hosing instability poses a feasibility risk for plasma-based accelerator concepts. Though potential mitigation methods have been discussed extensively in the blow-out regime, less attention has been devoted to hosing in the long-beam, linear wakefield regime [1,2], which is relevant for PWFA concepts geared towards high-energy physics applications, such as the AWAKE experiment.
We show...
The proton driven plasma Wakefield acceleration experiment AWAKE at CERN demonstrated basic electron capturing and acceleration using a rather long electron bunch spreading out over several plasma wavelengths. For the second phase of the experiment called Run 2, the aim is to inject a short electron bunch with appropriate emittance and charge to achieve full capture and emittance preservation...
Particle acceleration in a quasilinear plasma wake provides access to high acceleration gradients while avoiding self-trapping of the background electrons. However, this regime is highly nonlinear, with the focussing field acting on an externally injected witness bunch strongly dependent on the plasma response to the witness itself. Here we discuss matching of the witness bunch to the...
Proton-driven plasma wakefield acceleration of electrons was first demonstrated in 2018 by the Advanced Wakefield Experiment (AWAKE) at CERN [1]. Following this achievement, AWAKE has developed the Run 2 research program, aimed at producing high-quality electron bunches reaching tens of GeV [2].
In the baseline Run 2 program, a one-meter gap is required between two plasmas to inject electron...
Following a successful Run 1 experiment, AWAKE has developed a baseline plan for Run 2 that requires the implementation of a compact electron source for external injection of a witness bunch in the plasma wave. The feasibility of using a laser wakefield accelerator (LWFA) to produce the electron bunch is investigated. The EARLI project (Electron Accelerator driven by a Reliable Laser for...
Particle beams of high energy and spin-polarization are necessary for various experiments, i.a. in order to test the Standard Model of particle physics. Over the last few years, several setups for spin-polarized electron and proton beams from laser-plasma interaction have been proposed. We present a mechanism based on magnetic vortex acceleration, where the interaction of a single laser pulse...
In a hybrid LWFA-driven PWFA (LPWFA) electron beams from a laser wakefield acceleration (LWFA) stage are utilized to drive a plasma wave in a subsequent plasma wakefield acceleration (PWFA) stage for acceleration of witness electron bunches to high energies. This concept allows for the exploration of PWFA-physics in a compact setup and harnessing the advantages of both plasma acceleration...
We report on the conceptual design of an amplification chain based on Tm-doped gain medium [1], for solid-state, ultra-short CPA laser pulses, aiming at high-efficiency, kHz repetition rate, high peak power and kW-scale average power, with emission wavelength around 2 µm. A multi-pass configuration is presented, with three stages, with 4% doped Tm:Lu2O3 ceramic thin discs, lateral (edge) [3]...
Recent experiments have shown the capability of Laser wakefield accelerated (LWFA) electron beams to be suitable driver beams for a particle driven wakefield acceleration (PWFA) stage. The high peak current and short duration of such beams open up the possibility of operating the PWFA stage at density ranges in the order of $10^{18} \mathrm{cm}^{-3}$. Here, femtosecond optical probing of the...
We study the propagation of an electron bunch travelling within a proton bunch through a plasma density ramp. Because the proton bunch density in the ramp is higher than the plasma density, the bunch generates a high density, on-axis plasma electron filament. This filament is defocusing for the electron witness bunch that can therefore be lost along the ramp. At AWAKE we have measured this...
Innovative particle accelerators based on plasma technology allow a drastic reduction in size, thanks to the high acceleration field established inside plasmas, created and confined by particular devices. Plasma wake-field acceleration experiments are performed at the SPARC LAB test facility by using devices consisting in gas-filled capillaries, in which the plasma formation is achieved by...
Laser and plasma wakefield acceleration is a two-stage process. Electron bunches are accelerated to relativistic velocities and then tailored to specific characteristics. In depth understanding and control of the involved acceleration mechanisms is crucial. Femtosecond probing gives insight into plasma dynamics during acceleration. Spectrally broadened and compressed probe pulses with a length...
FLASH Therapy, an innovative technique in radiation therapy, has shown to dramatically spare normal tissue toxicities in multiple organs maintaining the efficiency as conventional irradiation to inhibit tumor growth. The therapy has been successfully tested using microsecond pulses of low energy electrons, using intrapulse dose rate in the range 106–107 Gy/s, time-averaged dose rate >100 Gy/s,...
Laser plasma acceleration [1] provides several advantages compared to conventional radio-frequency accelerators for electron source injectors: high accelerating gradients up to hundreds of gigavolts per meter (compactness) and short duration electron beams. However, the control of quality and stability of the produced electron bunches remains a challenge.
In this report we focus on the...
Laser-plasma accelerators are rapidly developing to produce high-quality sub-GeV electron beams capable of Free Electron Laser (FEL) operation. Their reduced size and cost with respect to conventional accelerators can widely spread the use of particle beams in medical physics and industry. Although multi GeV electron energies were demonstrated, more work is needed to establish high quality...
We study experimentally hosing [1] of a long proton bunch in plasma in AWAKE. We induce this process with misalignment between the trajectories of a preceding short electron bunch and that of the proton bunch. We observe hosing as transverse oscillation of the proton bunch centroid position in the plane of misalignment at the period of the wakefields. Self-modulation (SM) occurs in the...
Laser-wakefield acceleration (LWFA) has been investigated as a possible route towards a compact, high-gradient replacement for current RF-based accelerator technology. LWFAs recently made huge progress in terms of achievable energy (multi-GeV), charge (~nC), current (up to 100 kA) and spectral charge density (up to 20pC/MeV). However, due to the sensitive dependence on driver fluctuations and...
Beam-driven plasma-wakefield acceleration has the potential to reduce the building cost of accelerator facilities, with large accelerating fields that are orders of magnitude greater than those of radio-frequency cavities. Sustaining strong decelerating fields for the driver and strong accelerating fields for the trailing bunch across long plasma stages will be key to demonstrating high energy...
For the creation of matter-antimatter pairs from the quantum vacuum via the Breit-Wheeler effect, an intense laser and energetic γ-rays need to interact. At the Stanford Linear Accelerator Center the Breit-Wheeler experiment in the perturbative regime has been accomplished in 1997 but was never implemented in the non-perturbative regime. At the moment, this experiment is in preparation in a...
Laser-Ion acceleration typically uses thin foils as targets, where the density is typically a few hundred times the critical density (n_c ). Targets with just a few times n_c constitute an interesting target system for laser plasma acceleration. Unfortunately, these densities are hard to achieve in experiment. In this poster we present an exploding foil experiment, were we pre-expand a thin...
With the possibility of using high-power laser systems as drivers for particle acceleration, laser diagnostics becomes even more important in that field.
Knowledge of spatial-temporal couplings such as pulse-front tilt or curvature is important to determine the focused intensity of high-power lasers. Common techniques to determine these couplings are either qualitative or complex to set up....
A laser wakefield experiment was performed at the Lund Laser Centre with the support of ARIES Transnational Access programme. In the context of the EuPRAXIA project it aimed to explore possible control mechanisms over laser-plasma coupling and the resulting trapping and acceleration dynamics of the produced electron bunches. Three main experimental parameters which have a large impact on the...
Ultrafast shadowgraphy with transverse few-cycle probe pulses has enabled the observation of details of the laser-plasma interactions with unprecedented temporal (fs) and spatial (µm) resolution. However, in previous studies, probe pulses spanning a broad frequency spectrum have been commonly used to achieve an acceptable signal-to-noise ratio because of the limit of probe pulse energy....
A Laser-Wakefield Accelerator can produce electrons in the MeV range just over a few millimetres. However, due to their finite energy spread and divergence the applications of these electrons become limited. By tailoring the plasma density, the phase can be manipulated and hence gaining control of the bunch energy spread and divergence. Here, the properties of 100 MeV shock-assisted...
The LUXE (Laser Und XFEL Experiment) project at DESY Hamburg aims to measure processes in the strong-field quantum electrodynamics regime with high precision by colliding electrons or a high-energy photon beam with a high-power, tightly focused laser beam at a repetition rate of 1Hz. Simulations [LUXE CDR, arXiv:2102.02032 [hep-ex]] predict that the probability of pair production responds...
The multi-pulse laser wakefield acceleration (MP-LWFA) scheme provides a route for GeV-scale accelerators operating at kilohertz-repetition-rates driven by picosecond-duration laser pulses, such as those available from thin-disk lasers, which are modulated to be resonant with the plasma wave. We recently published theoretical work proposing a new scheme of GeV accelerator based on MP-LWFA. In...
Simultaneous space-time focusing occurs when a transversely-chirped ultrashort laser pulse is focused using a conventional lens. Before the lens different frequencies are separated radially so that at any point on the transverse plane the local bandwidth is relatively low. These frequencies are brought together downstream of the lens as they approach the focus. As the spatial overlap between...
Proton-driven PWA is particularly well-suited for producing bunches of high-energy electrons. A number of particle physics applications for these types of beams will be presented. These include beam-dump, fixed target, and collider applications covering a wide range of fundamental physics research.
Beam-driven plasma wakefield acceleration experiments require state-of-the-art facilities in order to operate. In this talk, we review challenges associated with operating these facilities, including: beam quality and stability, machine-experiment interface, controls challenges, diagnostic challenges, and communication and scheduling issues. We hope that by clarifying these issues, we can...
We study the propagation of an electron bunch travelling within a proton bunch through a plasma density ramp. Because the proton bunch density in the ramp is higher than the plasma density, the bunch generates a high density, on-axis plasma electron filament. This filament is defocusing for the electron witness bunch that can therefore be lost along the ramp. At AWAKE we have measured this...
A particle bunch propagating through plasma will induce a non-linear response when $n_b \gg n_{e0}$ [1]. A negatively charged bunch will drive a blow-out, in which all plasma electrons are expelled from the propagation axis. A positively charged bunch will attract plasma electrons, which will flow-in to the propagation axis, creating a filament [2]. This will sustain focusing fields for the...
This talk will review recent applications of machine learning techniques to plasma-based acceleration, both for simulation workflows and for real-time control of experiments. I will briefly describe the working principle of some of these techniques, and discuss how plasma-based accelerators could take advantage of them. I will also discuss some of the recent applications of machine learning to...
Beam- and laser-driven wakefield acceleration is now routinely simulated with Particle-In-Cell (PIC) codes. Due to their increasingly wide use in our community, these tools tend to be considered as highly trustworthy under any circumstances. However, some numerical errors can significantly affect the acceleration process and alter the simulated beam properties. One example is the Numerical...
This talk presents openPMD, an open and F.A.I.R. standard for particle-mesh data, and its impact in heterogeneous scientific workflows.
Particle accelerator codes need to span various time and length scales, leading to data processing pipelines consisting of multiple heterogeneous codes.
Standardization of physical data helps bridging the different models with a commonly-understood markup,...
Plasma-based alternatives to conventional accelerators are largely investigated for electrons, whereas there are extremely few studies dedicated to positrons. Indeed, positrons are difficult to create and guide in the self-generated fields of laser-plasma interaction. Landmark studies demonstrated that positron beams created by conventional accelerators can be further accelerated in plasma...
Modeling plasma-based accelerators is a computationally challenging task.
To resolve the full kinetic behavior of the beams and the plasma, particle-in-cell (PIC) codes are the method of choice. In the quasi-static approximation it is assumed that the beams evolve on a different time scale than the plasma,allowing for a separate treatment of the beams. Consequently, quasi-static PIC enables...
Laser-plasma acceleration (LPA) is a compact technique to accelerate electron bunches to highly relativistic energies, making it a promising candidate to power radiation sources for industrial or medical applications. However, further improvements in terms of repetition rate and stability are required for LPAs to compete with already existing technologies. We report on the generation of...
Relativistic plasmas generated by high-power laser pulses are promising candidates for future compact particle accelerators. In a laser wakefield accelerator for electrons, a driving laser pulse generates a high-amplitude plasma wave forming an electric field structure (the “wakefield”), which can trap and accelerate electrons to several GeV energies over few-centimeter distances only. The...
The energy required to drive a large-amplitude plasma wave can be delivered over many plasma periods, rather than in a single period, if the driving pulse is modulated. This approach opens up plasma accelerators to novel laser technologies which can provide the required energy at high pulse repetition rates, and with high wall-plug efficiency. The required modulation can be achieved in a...
Laser technology is evolving fast and high-power lasers needed for plasma acceleration are already available as commercial products, offered by several companies, and in compact setups suitable for space-limited environments in industrial or hospital settings. It is time to identify key areas where compact laser-plasma accelerators can have a scientific and/or societal impact. Here, two...
Applications of laser plasma accelerated proton beams in cancer therapy were discussed almost since the first demonstration of compact plasma accelerators. In-vitro studies to investigate the radiobiology of these intense particle bunches were performed, in particular with respect to dose rate related phenomena. With the recently reported FLASH effect, observed to reduce radiation toxicity in...
Proton bunches produced via Target Normal Sheath Acceleration have unique features (ultra-short duration, high-flux and low emittance at the source), which could enable a plethora of new applications. However, the beam maximum energy and quality are still open challenges.
Recent experimental results obtained at the Intense Laser Irradiation Laboratory (INO-CNR, Italy) demonstrated a reliable...
High peak current electron beams from laser wakefield accelerators (LWFA) are capable to drive a particle driven wakefield (PWFA) in a subsequent stage. The intrinsic short duration of these driver beams opens the possibility for PWFA studies in a higher density regime of the order of $10^{18} \cdot \mathrm{cm}^{-3}$. Since optical probing provides a reasonable contrast at this density range,...
One of the most important features of laser-plasma based accelerators is their compactness while still providing very high accelerating fields up to hundreds of GV/m. The main challenge lies in characterizing and controlling the plasma itself, which determines its proper synchronization with the particle beam to be accelerated, an issue that strongly influences the quality of the accelerated...
THz radiation with sufficient intensity finds various applications, including pump-probe experiments in free-electron lasers, wireless communication, material analysis, process control in biology, pharmacy, and medicine. The most common process for generating THz radiation is by optical rectification, in which laser pulses incident to a nonlinear crystal produce broadband THz pulses. A compact...
Dielectric laser accelerator (DLA) has emerged as a miniaturised and cost-effective tool for particle acceleration. DLAs have proved to be a promising candidate for GeV/m acceleration gradient within the damage threshold of the materials used. However, the emittance growth and energy spread increase at higher particle energies and limit the realistic applications. Here we present the numerical...
A novel model of space charge forces is proposed for a low-energy (γ~1) bunch with arbitrary charge distribution in RF-guns. By exploiting Green function method, it is possible to develop an analytical approach and derive expressions of self-induced forces for any transverse and longitudinal bunch distribution. The model is accurate also in the approximation of low energy beams, when the 3D...
The past years have seen a growing interest in plasma-based accelerator technology since it provides a route to more compact, ecological yet powerful accelerators. However, even well-established acceleration techniques are only effective with particles traveling at speeds close to the speed of light (relativistic particles), leading to the exclusion of heavier particles, e.g. muons from the...
The dielectric accelerator is one of the most advanced accelerator concept, in which the ultra high accelerating field can be excited by either optical to infrared laser or ultrashort relativistic electron bunches. The beam driven dielectric wakefield accelerators (DWFA) make use of the electromagnetic Cherenkov radiation (wakefield) from the electron bunches that pass through the...
Building small scale particle accelerators on a photonic chip may lead to revolutionary applications of particle accelerators, including new minimally invasive beam irradiation tools for physicians. All individual elements required for particle accelerators on a chip have been demonstrated, but a beam confinement scheme matched to the nano- and micrometer size was needed. By alternately...
EuPRAXIA@SPARC_LAB is a new Free Electron Laser (FEL) facility that is currently under construction at the Laboratori Nazionali di Frascati of the INFN. The electron beam driving the FEL will be delivered by an X-band normal conducting LINAC followed by a plasma wakefield acceleration stage. It will be characterized by a small footprint and include two different plasma-driven photon beamlines....
Laser-plasma accelerators (LPA) are one the verge of becoming drivers for real-world science applications. However, in order to be considered serious alternatives to conventional machines they need to be able to provide competitive quality and versatility of the electron beam parameters as requested by potential applications. As shown by numerous experiments in the past LPAs are in principle...
Comb electron beams are fs and high brightness electron bunches used to drive plasma accelerating modules. An ultra-relativistic beam of charged particles (the driver) through a plasma generates a wake of charge density useful for accelerate a witness beam (Particle driven WakeField Acceleration - PWFA). The witness dynamics control is fundamental to achieve the optimum transverse and...
Plasma-wakefield accelerators provide acceleration gradients several orders of magnitude larger than conventional accelerators and as such, represent a promising technology for reducing the footprint of future particle accelerators. The luminosity in colliders and the brilliance in free-electron lasers, scales with the repetition rate at which the accelerator operates. Therefore, repetition...
The self-modulation instability (SMI) is instrumental for single-stage plasma wakefield accelerator concepts with long, high-energy drive bunches such as the AWAKE experiment. It provides a self-consistent mechanism to reach high-amplitude wakefields despite the driver's length, which would otherwise not excite the plasma resonantly.
In recent demonstrations of acceleration with a...
The applications envisioned for advanced linear accelerator-based facilities rely on the production of intense particle beams delivered at high repetition rates. Indeed, the demanding brightness and luminosity foreseen by electron driven radiation sources and linear colliders, respectively, imply the coexistence of high peak currents and small transverse emittances. The acceleration of such...
Modeling plasma wakefield accelerators is computationally challenging. Using cost-reducing algorithms like the quasi-static approximation allows for efficient modeling of demanding plasma wakefield accelerator scenarios. In this work, the latest highlights of the performance-portable, 3D quasi-static particle-in-cell (PIC) code HiPACE++ [1] are presented. The code applies modern HPC practices...
Over the past decade, many experiments showed that interactions of relativistic laser pulses with targets whose geometrical features are comparable to the laser wavelength can result in increased energy coupling between the laser field and the target electrons.
Several different models were suggested to explain this phenomenon. However, unveiling the details of these interactions through...
We explore a novel simulation route for Plasma Wakefield Acceleration (PWFA) by using the computational method known as the Lattice Boltzmann Method (LBM). LBM is based on a discretization of the continuum kinetic theory while assuring the convergence towards hydrodynamics for coarse-grained fields (i.e., density, velocity, etc.). LBM is an established numerical analysis tool in computational...
The optimisation of electron beams accelerated by laser driven wakefield in plasma relies on the identification of the optimum plasma and laser properties for a specific regime of acceleration. The influence of laser symmetry around focus on the electron properties was investigated to understand recent experimental results in the case of ionisation injection in gas cells.
In order to...
A particle bunch propagating through plasma will induce a non-linear response when $n_b \gg n_{e0}$ [1]. A positively charged bunch will attract plasma electrons, which will flow-in to the propagation axis, creating a filament [2]. This will sustain defocusing fields for negatively charged particles.
In the Advanced Wakefield Experiment (AWAKE) [3], in which a long proton bunch drives high...
Interest is growing around developing techniques to shape the wavefunction of electrons.
We propose to use the time-dependent electromagnetic fields of ultrashort laser pulses to control the quantum-mechanical phase of electron pulses. We present a theoretical model showing that the ponderomotive interaction between electrons and a high-intensity strongly-focused laser beam can be used to...
The state of the art in terms of Plasma Wakefield Acceleration simulation accuracy are Particle in Cell (PIC) codes, based on a kinetic model which requires hard numerical integration and execution times of hundreds of hours on processors clusters for centimetre-long simulations. During my Master's thesis a computationally lighter model was developed, able to accurately reproduce the most...
New laser facilities will reach intensities of $10^{23} \text{W cm}^{-2}$. This advance enables novel experimental setups in the study of laser-plasma interaction. In these setups with extreme fields quantum electrodynamic (QED) effects like photon emission via non-linear Compton scattering and Breit-Wheeler pair production become important.
We study high-intensity lasers grazing the...
Energy-recovery linac (ERL) light sources facilities based on superconducting (SC) cavities are deemed as ones of the most promising techniques in the future of accelerator physics. Running in a continuous wave (CW) mode with a high repetition rate, the ERL we are addressing in this study exploits a two-pass two-way mechanism, where the energy endures in the beam after being used, then...
External injection of high quality, low energy electron bunches into a laser driven plasma wakefield has been proposed as a method to improve the quality and stability of the accelerated electrons. Simulations have shown the preservation of emittance and energy spread of injected bunches but there has been only one experiment to date demonstrating successful injection and acceleration. We...
The talk will summarize the current status of high peak power ytterbium- and thulium based fiber lasers (i.e. at 1µm and 2µm wavelength) based on coherent combination. In addition the nonlinear pulse compression to few-cycle pulses at mJ pulse energy level and high repetition rate (100kHz) as well as paths for temporal contrast enhancement will be presented. The discussion of the scaling...
Applications such as high harmonic generation, laser plasma X-ray sources, inverse Compton scattering, electron acceleration and laser-driven neutron sources demand for always higher pulse energies and peak intensities at higher repetition rates
With significant progress in high-power laser technology during the past decade, new concepts of laser driver sources are rapidly emerging for...
According to recent theories, ion acceleration is predicted to achieve high efficiency with the use of single-cycle laser pulses. Few-cycle, high-repetition-rate laser systems with modest energy (10s of mJ) have been developed recently with remarkable stability. With the use of adaptive optics, such laser pulses can be focused down to relativistic intensities, providing a platform for...
Amplitude is involved in the increase of the average power of high energy system since 10 years. In the frame of ELI ALPS, we have already reached the level of 100W of average power on a 500TW at 10Hz (20fs) and we should be above 300W in the next 2 years. This results are possible thanks to the development of a new range of pump laser based on Nd:YAG liquid cooled disk laser head.
Today...
Laser plasma accelerators have been the subject of intensive research over the past decades since the availability of ultra high intensity lasers based on chirped pulse amplification technique. Record electron energy close to 10 GeV have been demonstrated and implementation of several controls on LPA systems combined with the use of the latest machine learning techniques have allowed very...
Increasing the luminosity of laser-driven electron accelerators to the level required for future FEL or TeV-class collider applications ideally requires a 100-1000 fold stepping up in the average power of driver lasers, translating into ultrashort/ultraintense systems close to or exceeding the kHz repetition rate and the 1-10kW average power. Scaling current technology based on Nd-pumped TiSa...
In this talk we present on the role of optical parametric chirped pulse amplification (OPCPA) in high energy laser systems at ELI-Beamlines. OPCPA is an integral part of 3 of the 4 lasers at the ELI-Beamlines laser facility and will be used as the chief amplification technology in the L2-DUHA laser which is currently under development and intended to serve as a driver for laser wakefield...
Laser-plasma accelerators (LPA) will be at the core of next-generation accelerators. Advancing LPA core technolgies, including the development of high average power drive lasers, is an integral part of DESY's accelerator R&D.
We will update on the recent developments of KALDERA, DESY's flagship LPA drive laser currently under development. KALDERA will deliver 100TW LPA drive laser pulses at...
EuPRAXIA (European Plasma Research Accelerator with eXcellence In Applications) is an ESFRI project for a compact European infrastructure with 5 GeV electron beams based on plasma accelerators. It will soon enter its Preparatory Phase, recently approved and funded by the European Union. The EuPRAXIA project is supported by a large consortium and foresees two main construction sites. One site...
The EuPRAXIA@SSPARC_LAB facility is the beam driven pillar of the EuPRAXIA project which is expected to provide by the end of 2028 the first European Research Infrastructure dedicated to demonstrating usability of plasma accelerators delivering high brightness beams up to 1-5 GeV for users.
Among the possible EuPRAXIA@SPRC_LAB applications the realization of a short wavelength Free Electron...
ELI-Beamlines, located near Prague in Czech Republic, is one the pillar of the pan-European Extreme Light Infrastructure (ELI) project. The specific nature of the ELI-Beamlines facility is its multi-discipline features, opening wide opportunities for the worldwide user community to cultivate secondary radiation and particle sources for revolutionary applications. The ELI-Beamlines development,...
The Extreme Photonics Applications Centre, a new 10Hz Petawatt laser facility under construction will be a state-of-the art centre for laser-driven plasma accelerator research and its applications. I will give a brief update about the project
The prototyping accelerator based on laser-plasma technology (PALLAS) project is aiming to build a laser-plasma injector accelerator (LPI) test facility with the aim to deliver within a few years electron beams of 150-250 MeV, < 5% energy dispersion, >30 pC, <1 mm.mrad emittance beam at 10 Hz with control and stability comparable with RF accelerator. The project approach is based on three...
Laser wakefield accelerators (LWFAs) are capable of generating ultra-high accelerating gradient up to 100 GV/m, and hold a great potential as a candidate for driving compact free electron lasers (FELs). However, the stability and insufficient beam quality, in terms of energy spread, large initial divergence, present a substantial obstacle to the realization of high-gain FELs. With the in-house...
Laser Plasma Accelerator (LPA) capabilities of producing high peak current, low emittance and GeV electron beams within a cm scale of accelerating distance paved the way for the realization of future compact light sources. With the continuous developments on LPA stability and electron beam properties, free electron laser (FEL) amplification had been recently demonstrated.
We report here on...
The breakthrough provided by plasma-based accelerators enabled unprecedented accelerating fields by boosting electron beams to GeV energies within few cm.
This enables the realization of table-top accelerators able to drive a Free-Electron Laser (FEL), a formidable tool to investigate matter at sub-atomic level by generating X-UV coherent light pulses with fs and sub-fs durations.
So far,...
We demonstrate the divergence reduction of laser driven wakefield accelerated electron beams using a compact plasma lens in a single stage setup. We modify the gas density profile of a super sonic gas jet and create a shallow second density bump, which serves as a passive plasma lens, using a small ($<1$cm$^3$) metal wedge. The plasma lens decreases the electron beam divergence from averaged...
Laser-plasma accelerators (LPAs) outperform current radiofrequency technology in acceleration strength by orders of magnitude. Yet, enabling them to deliver competitive beam quality for demanding applications, particularly in terms of energy spread and stability, remains a major challenge. Here, we report on a recently published method that combines bunch decompression and active plasma...
We use Galilean transformation to the co-moving coordinates s=x, ξ=x−ct. This allows to overcome the huge scale disparity otherwise present in wake field simulations. Different from the standard quasi-static codes, the new Galilean PIC code accurately simulates the laser pulse wave structure, because the full set of Maxwell's equations is solved. The code treats all numerical macroparticles...
The use of accelerated electrons from a laser wakefield accelerator (LWFA) as drivers of a plasma wakefield stage (PWFA) provides compact PWFAs that can serve as a test bed for the efficient investigation and optimization of PWFAs and their development into brightness boosters. Such hybrid accelerators have been experimentally realized at HZDR and LMU to study novel injection schemes. To...
In the framework of both EuAPS and SAMOTRACE projects funded by the PNRR Italian program, a new high-power laser facility called “I-LUCE” (INFN Laser indUced radiation acCEleration) will be realized at LNS-INFN. Thanks to the use of the latest available technology, the system will be able to amplify light with a power of 500 TW, with a fs duration, and with a repetition rate of 1Hz. This will...
Laser-plasma accelerators can generate GeV electron beams in an ultra-compact, cm-scale setup, but have yet to demonstrate sufficient beam quality and stability for demanding applications. To overcome this challenge, broad optimization of the accelerator design with numerical simulations is essential. However, due to the high computational cost of general particle-in-cell simulations,...
This poster presents openPMD, an open and F.A.I.R. standard for particle-mesh data, and its impact in heterogeneous scientific workflows.
Particle accelerator codes need to span various time and length scales, leading to data processing pipelines consisting of multiple heterogeneous codes.
Standardization of physical data helps bridging the different models with a commonly-understood markup,...
Discharge capillaries are an essential plasma-source for a wealth of different applications in plasma-based accelerators. The long, uniform plasma profiles have been pivotal in both LWFA and PWFA experiments alike. The repetition rate of such sources has been limited to 1-10 Hz, far below the required 10 kHz to MHz of a plasma-based collider or FEL. Development of high repetition rate...
The drivers for laser plasma accelerators (LPA) are typically based on Ti:Sa technology, which is limited to repetition rates in the lower Hz range for high energies and to average powers of ~100 W. In contrast, modern Yb:YAG thin disk laser technology offers a magnitude higher average powers and repetition rates in the kHz range, combined with a high electrical-to-optical efficiency. The...
Beam-driven plasma-wakefield acceleration is a promising avenue for the future design of compact linear accelerators with applications in high-energy physics and photon science. Meeting the luminosity and brilliance demands of current users requires the delivery of thousands of bunches per second – many orders of magnitude beyond the current state-of-the-art of plasma-wakefield accelerators,...
With the development of chirped-pulse amplification ultra-short lasers with femtosecond pulse durations have become readily available and are used in numerous applications such as material processing or plasma-based accelerators. In most cases, these lasers are focused to small spot sizes, exceeding intensities of $10^{13}\;W/cm^2$ and thus the ionization threshold in most materials. As this...
Laser-plasma acceleration (LPA) promises compact sources of high-brightness electron beams for science and industry. However, transforming LPA into a technology to drive real-world applications remains a challenge. Machine learning techniques could prove decisive in further understanding and improving the performance of these machines. Here, we discuss the application of supervised learning to...
The FLASHForward experimental facility is a test-bed for beam-driven plasma-wakefield (PWFA) research and development, with a view towards both photon-science (e.g. FELs) and high-energy-physics applications (e.g. linear colliders). The facility benefits from the FEL-quality electron bunches provided by the FLASH linac to drive a wakefield in a plasma produced inside a windowless gas cell with...
Traveling-wave electron acceleration (TWEAC) is an advanced laser-plasma accelerator scheme, which is neither limited by dephasing, nor by pump depletion or diffraction. Such accelerators are scalable to energies beyond 10 GeV without the need for staging and are candidates for future compact electron-positron colliders based on existing CPA lasers.
Requiring to model a large plasma volume in...
The generation and acceleration of ultra-short, high quality electron beams has attracted more and more interest in accelerator science. Electron bunches with these properties and highest stability are necessary to operate and test novel diagnostics and advanced high gradient accelerating schemes.
The dedicated R&D linac ARES at DESY (Deutsches Elektronen-Synchrotron) is now fully operational...
The GV/m accelerating gradients inherent to plasma accelerators may hold the key to unlocking cost-effective accelerators, facilitating the acceleration of particle bunches to higher energies over shorter distances. However, in order to reach the luminosity and brilliance demands of high-energy physicists and photon scientists, plasma accelerators of the future must be capable of accelerating...
In recent years, great progress to achieve extreme gradients preserving high quality of beams in compact plasma-based accelerating structures have been done, both by using laser-driven (LWFA) and particle-driven (PWFA) techniques. This research activity is strictly related to the design of dedicated devices to produce and confine plasmas in order to optimize the interaction with particle...
Using Laser-wakefield accelerated (LWFA) electron beams to drive a plasma-wakefield accelerator (PWFA) has been at the center of a multi-partner collaboration during the last few years. The motivation for doing so is two-fold: Firstly, current LWFA beams achieve peak currents beyond the capabilities of most dedicated PWFA facilites (with the exception of FACET-II), therefore our approach can...
The x-rays produced by laser wakefield accelerators have a unique combination of properties: they have an ultrafast duration, smooth broadband spectrum and emanate from a micrometre sized source. They are also readily co-located and synchronised with laser driven experiments. These properties make them well suited to a range of applications including high energy density physics.
This talk...
It is envisioned that a future energy-frontier lepton collider would require a center-of-mass energy beyond 10 TeV. Plasma accelerators are a leading candidate technology to reach these beam energies, owing to their ability to produce gradients on the order of 10 GV/m, leading to compact accelerator structures. To realize a future plasma-based collider, intermediate facilities are required to...
Particle physics requires high energies, beyond what is possible in a single plasma-accelerator stage. Coupling of stages is, however, very challenging due to chromatic aberrations and tight tolerances on synchronization. A new beam-optics scheme is proposed, based on nonlinear plasma lenses, promising to enable compact staging without degrading emittance, as well as improving tolerances on...
Advanced Accelerator Facilities in the US cover a broad range of topics and applications. Prominent facilities include FACET-II at SLAC, BELLA at LBNL, AWA at Argonne, ATF at Brookhaven, and the Texas Petawatt Laser. Combined, these facilities generate enormous scientific output. We review major results from the past decade and expected outcomes in the near future. We also consider steps...
In this talk, an update on advanced plasma accelerator technology development in China will be presented. First, recent relevant research activities in the major laser labs in china (THU, PKU, SJTU, SIOM, LFRC) will be reviewed. Then two major initiatives on plasma wakefield accelerator involving two major accelerator labs in China (IHEP and Shanghai Light source) will be introduced. In the...
A new concept for a low cost high efficiency linear collider based on LN2 cooled copper accelerator structures will be described. The collider is expected to have a performance similar to ILC with higher gradients allowing for the potential of higher energy reach at a substantially lower cost per GeV. The R&D status, expected performance, and future plans will be described.
The Center for Bright Beams (CBB) is a U. S. National Science Foundation Science and Technology Center with more than 10 participating institutions and includes participating universities and affiliated U.S. national laboratories. I’ll give an introduction to the research scope of the center, which spans beam production via photocathodes, beam acceleration with superconducting radiofrequency...
The U.S. Particle Physics Community Planning Exercise, 'Snowmass 2021' was completed in July 2022 and provides input for the Particle Physics Project Prioritization Panel (P5), which will develop a ~10 year scientific vision for the future of the U.S. high energy physics program. In this contribution we provide a general overview of the Snowmass 2021 conclusions and discuss the outcomes...
Acceleration of particles in photonic nanostructures fabricated using semiconductor manufacturing techniques and driven by ultrafast solid state lasers is a new and promising approach to developing future generations of compact particle accelerators. Substantial progress has been made in this area in recent years, fueled by a growing international collaboration of universities, national...
Particle accelerators have a wide variety of applications in science, industry and medicine. Shrinking these devices to chip-based solutions would, as well as reducing costs, allow new tools such as a miniature endoscopic electron irradiation device. The individual components needed to create particle accelerators on a chip had all been established, but a beam confinement system that could...
The energy gain that has been achieved experimentally in dielectric laser accelerators has been limited to below 1 MeV to date. Limitations arise from the available laser pulse energy and from keeping the particles aligned in the microscopic accelerating channels. A significant progress in the focusing of the particles, and thus in the containment in the accelerating channel, has recently been...
Developing new methods for tailoring the phase-space distribution of electron beams is a challenging and essential task in next-generation particle accelerators, compact x-rays sources, and ultrafast electron microscopy. RF-cavities are routinely employed in accelerator science to manipulate the electrons’ phase-space. This contribution shows the use of a miniaturized RF-cavity to chop the...
Developing new methods for tailoring the phase-space distribution of electron beams is a challenging and essential task in next-generation particle accelerators, compact x-rays sources, and ultrafast electron microscopy. RF-cavities are routinely employed in accelerator science to manipulate the electrons’ phase-space. This contribution shows the use of a miniaturized RF-cavity to chop the...
