A pre-formed plasma channel can be used to maintain laser pulse intensity over the full dephasing/pump depletion length of a laser plasma accelerator and maximize electron beam energy for a given drive laser. In this talk we present recent results[1] that show high quality guiding of ~0.5PW (20J) laser pulses in a 30cm-long, hydrodynamic optical-field-ionized (HOFI) plasma channel. By varying...
The dual 10 PW lasers at ELI NP, surrounded by well-equipped experimental areas, provide the user community with privileged access to a versatile laser system capable of delivering up to 250 J of energy over 25 fs or longer pulse durations. This enables target intensities of approximately 10ยฒยณโW/cmยฒ, with a repetition rate of one shot per minute. This unique European facility has been designed...
Recent demonstrations of all-optical multi-GeV laser wakefield acceleration (LWFA) have been enabled by the development of low-density meter-scale plasma waveguides produced above supersonic gas jets. This talk reviews recent advances at the University of Maryland which have enabled these results, focusing on the development of elongated supersonic gas jets, experimental and simulation studies...
Developing compact โall-opticalโ ion accelerators using high-power lasers has attracted significant interest due to their broad applicative potential in science, industry, and healthcare. Most research on ion acceleration has focused on the Target Normal Sheath Acceleration (TNSA) and the Radiation Pressure Acceleration (RPA) mechanisms using the typical Gaussian laser beam TEM00. Although the...
Laser plasma-based particle accelerators attract great interest in fields where conventional accelerators reach limits based on size, cost or beam parameters. However, laser accelerators have not yet reached their full potential in producing high-radiation doses at high particle energies. The quest to fully leverage the available laser pulse energies is guided by first principles simulations...
Laser-plasma acceleration has enormous potential to provide compact sources of ultra-short ion beams. Several factors, such as the low shot-to-shot stability, large beam divergence and the difficulty of high-repetition rate operation, hamper their wider adoption. Recent work demonstrates an approach for overcoming these challenges using a novel liquid sheet target, developed at the SLAC...
The Compton scattering between a GeV electron beam and a relativistic laser pulse is a promising scheme for studies including radiation reaction in strong-field quantum electrodynamics (QED), in-suit laser intensity measurement, and brilliant gamma-ray generation. Instead of using the routine method with an individual scattering laser, we applied the self-aligned single-laser Compton...
All-optical nonlinear Compton scattering (NCS) experiment has been carried out with a multi-PW laser at Center for Relativistic Laser Science (CoReLS). CoReLS finished the construction of a 20 fs, 4 PW Ti:Sapphire laser in 2017 and achieved the record high laser intensity of 10^23 W/cm^2 in 2021. By applying the laser wakefield electron acceleration scheme, mono-energetic multi-GeV electrons...
Betatron radiation from laser-plasma accelerators has distinctive features: bright[1,2] broadband, micron scale source size, and ultrashort pulse duration of the order of femtoseconds. Betatron radiation has been successfully used for X-ray imaging, including single[3] shot phase contrast imaging[4] and multimodal imaging[5].
Pushing betatron-based imaging to higher and higher resolution...
The recent observation of a normal tissue protecting effect of ultra-high dose rate (UHDR) radiation at unchanged tumor treatment efficacy, the FLASH effect, promises great benefits for radiotherapy patients. Since the first description of the FLASH effect, preclinical studies have confirmed the effect for electrons, photons, protons, and carbon ions in various tumor and normal tissue models....
Muons and their applications in tomography of large objects have recently gained significant interest within the accelerator physics community. However, the lack of portable muon sources has limited muon tomography to relying on cosmic rays, which are characterized by a low and non-directional flux. This restricts muon tomography to objects that remain immobile for extended periods....
Laser plasma accelerators (LPAs) have emerged as a viable alternative to traditional accelerators for various applications, thanks to their capability to generate high-brightness beams and much higher accelerating gradients. This enables more compact designs for future light sources, such as free electron lasers (FELs). FEL technology leveraging LPA sources is progressing swiftly, with several...
Recent achievements in Laser and Plasma Wakefield Acceleration experiments are driving interest in the scientific community towards the realization of compact and cost-effective plasma-based particle accelerators and light sources.
Research in this field is focused in the optimization of the plasma acceleration mechanism, aimed at improving the quality and stability of accelerated particle...
Plasma wakefield acceleration (PWFA) offers accelerating fields up to two orders of magnitude higher than conventional RF cavities. Achieving TeV-scale electron energies for high-energy physics experiments, however, requires multiple acceleration stages in laser- and electron-driven PWFA schemes.
The AWAKE experiment at CERN explores a proton-driven approach, utilizing the kJ-level energy of...
The Scottish Centre for the Applications of Plasma-based Accelerators (SCAPA) is a state-of-the art research centre dedicated in providing high energy particle beams and next-generation radiation sources for users across all scientific and engineering disciplines. SCAPA, an ยฃ8M+ worth of investment of University of Strathclyde and SUPA (Scottish Universities Physics Alliance), houses two...
The availability of high brightness GeV-class electron beams at EupraXia@LNF makes it the ideal laboratory to explore the Full Inverse Compton Scattering (FICS) process, that has been theoretically predicted but still never experimentally observed. FICS occurs when relativistic electrons of any energy are impinged by photons of 255 keV of energy.
Electrons transfer all their kinetic energy to...
High-brightness, ultra-high peak current electron beams are of significant interest to applications including high-energy colliders, strong field quantum electrodynamics, and laboratory astrophysics. Despite such interest, compressing tightly-focused electron beams to attosecond pulse durations and mega-amp peak currents while preserving beam quality remains a challenge. In this work, we...
We present the energy-conserving theory of plasma wakefields in the strongly nonlinear "bubble" or "blowout" regime. In this theory, we derive an equation for the bubble boundary based on the energy conservation law. Compared to previous models, this equation precisely characterizes the bubble boundary and the accelerating field across a broad spectrum of driver parameters, including those...
Plasma-wakefield accelerators use tabletop equipment to produce relativistic femtosecond electron bunches. Optical and x-ray diagnostics have established that their charge concentrates within a micron-sized volume, but its sub-micron internal distribution, which critically influences gain in free-electron lasers or particle yield in colliders, has proven elusive to characterize. Here, by...
We present a novel and experimentally simple method for measuring the multispectral wavefronts of ultrashort laser pulses. IMPALA, or Iterative Multispectral Phase Analysis for LAsers, relies on only standard optical elements and a pinhole mask, allowing for the extraction and retrieval of multiple monochromatic wavefronts from a single polychromatic intensity image [1]. By algorithmically...
Recent developments in ultra-low emittance electron beam generation offer compact, high-quality particle sources for future high-energy physics and free-electron laser applications. Measuring such excellent emittances poses a significant challenge.
Here we present a new, laser-based technique which modulates the electron phase-space ponderomotively, achieving sub-0.1 mm mrad emittance...
This work explores the application of Bayesian methods to enhance measurement and optimization in experimental physics, with a focus on laser-plasma interactions. Bayesian updates enable the integration of prior knowledge with new data, facilitating refined parameter estimation and uncertainty quantification. These methods have been employed to achieve the first single-shot measurement of...
Next-generation accelerator concepts, which hinge on the precise shaping of beam distributions, demand equally precise diagnostic methods capable of reconstructing beam distributions within 6-dimensional phase spaces. However, the characterization of intricate features within 6-dimensional beam distributions using conventional diagnostic techniques necessitates hundreds of measurements, using...
Plasma-based accelerators achieve accelerating fields of 10-100 GV/m. While plasma wakefields naturally accelerate electrons due to their near-light-speed motion [1], heavier particles like muons [2] and pions, with lifetimes from microseconds to nanoseconds, struggle to be trapped due to velocity mismatch with the wake.
We use spatio-temporal spectral shaping [3,4,5] to control the group...
The road map towards high repetition rate laser systems
Laser-plasma accelerators have great potential to be compact and economic to enable future colliders up to 10 TeV. Such colliders couple many plasma accelerator stages, each requiring a ultrafast laser driver with multi-Joule pulse energy and tens-of-kHz rep-rate, i.e., hundred-kW-class average power. Tens-of-percent wall-plug efficiency is also required. Current ultrashort laser technologies,...
Future laser-driven plasma accelerators will require femtosecond-pulsed lasers that can deliver high peak powers at high repetition rates, posing significant challenges for current laser technology. Replacing key components in high-power lasers with plasma alternatives allows the manipulation of high-intensity beams and the construction of compact and damage-resistant laser systems. Here we...
The EuPRAXIA project (European Plasma Research Accelerator with Excellence in Applications) aims to develop advanced plasma-based accelerator technologies to create compact, high-performance particle accelerators. The EuPRAXIA@SPARC_LAB facility is the beam driven pillar of the EuPRAXIA project which is expected to provide by the end of 2029 the first European Research Infrastructure dedicated...
Over the past decade, laser systems capable of delivering extremely high power at high repetition rates have been developed. These developments now enable acceleration of charged particles to near-light speeds in a very compact plasma channel โ a few centimetres as opposed to kilometres required in a conventional accelerator. This technology is now considered "mature enough" for driving...
The ELI Beamlines Facility is a key pillar of the Extreme Light Infrastructure (ELI) ERIC. ELI Beamlines has developed and operates four state-of-the-art femtosecond laser systems, delivering both high peak and high average power. The facility provides a unique combination of primary (lasers) and secondary (high-energy particle and X-ray) sources.
Laser-driven particle accelerators have...
We present the conceptual design of an alternative injector system based on laser-plasma accelerator technology, to deliver high-quality electron bunches to PETRA IV โ the future 4th generation synchrotron light source at DESY. The design consists of a laser-plasma accelerator to produce electron bunches at 6 GeV with state-of-the-art energy spread and stability (โผ1%), and an X-band energy...
Laser-Plasma accelerators (LPAs) promise a compact alternative to modern RF-technology, and support orders of magnitude higher electric fields. GeV-energy LPA electron beams from cm-scale sources have been demonstrated. The intrinsically short scale of the accelerating structure features femtosecond-long beams with kA peak current, but at the same time makes precise control of the beam...
Next-generation free-electron laser-based coherent light sources and future particle colliders at the energy frontier demand high brightness, high energy electron beams that must have a sub-one percent energy spread and low emittance. Realizing such beams in practice using an ultrahigh gradient plasma accelerator remains a vexing challenge. Here we report the results of a Plasma Wakefield...
