The talk will provide an overview of high power lasers and short pulse ultraintense lasers, also discussing key properties of amplifying lasing media for short-pulse amplification.
An overview of ultraintense laser systems will be given, discussing main issues, from amplification to plasma, including focal spot quality, temporal contrast etc. Scaling of laser technology to drive future large...
Part I: Laser beams under tight focusing conditions
Off-axis parabolic mirrors are commonly used in high-power laser facilities for a variety of purposes, as they are able to focus laser pulses to relativistic intensities. Particularly, in the laser interaction with plasma or solids, it is highly desirable to have precise knowledge of the spatial and temporal structures of the incident...
Particle accelerators based on plasma waves promise revolutionary advancements in compact accelerator technology. To design and reliably operate these advanced accelerators, rapid yet accurate simulations and efficient optimization tools are essential. In this talk, I will provide a concise overview of the state-of-the-art in plasma accelerator modeling, highlighting fundamental simulation...
Twenty years after the celebrated "dream beam" experiments, laser wakefield acceleration has reached new milestones. For instance in 2024 electron energies up 10 GeV were reached in two different experiments, while other parameters of beam and source quality has been improved. Such progress has been achieved by either exploiting novel ideas or putting together already known concepts for key...
A. Whitehead 1,2, M. Miceski1,2, R. Demitra3,4, P. Zimmermann1, S. Niekrasz1, A. Jancarek1,2, S. Maity1, P. Sasorov1, J. T. Green1 and A. Molodozhentsev1
*1 ELI Beamlines Facility, The Extreme Light Infrastructure ERIC, Za Radnicí 835, 25241 Dolní Břežany, Czech Republic
2 Czech Technical University in Prague, Faculty of Nuclear Sciences and Physical Engineering, Břehová 7, 115 19...
Since the invention of Chirped Pulse Amplification (CPA), laser-driven plasma acceleration (LWFA) has experienced an exponential increase in performance, leading to a growing number of applications. These extend beyond particle acceleration, positioning LWFA as a promising source of radiation across a broad spectral range, from terahertz to gamma rays, potentially serving as a viable...
This talk provides an overview of recent progress and future directions in the development of plasma sources for beam-driven acceleration. I will review key achievements in designing and testing plasma discharge systems capable of generating long, uniform plasma channels for efficient acceleration. Emphasis is placed on high repetition rate operation, where experimental studies have...
Plasma-based acceleration is a promising technology for next-generation
particle accelerators, enabling high-gradient acceleration over compact
distances. However, accurate diagnostics are crucial to fully exploit
its potential.
In this talk, we will explore the diagnostics of both particle beams
used to drive plasma acceleration and those accelerated within plasma
structures. We will...
The development of ultra-compact plasma-based particle accelerators is primarily beneficial from the ultra-high acceleration gradient, which is achieved through coherent plasma wave excitation driven by high-intensity beams, such as photon or charged particle beams. The acceleration field in plasma wave is dependent upon the plasma density. The current state-of-the-art gaseous plasma-based...
Laser-driven Plasma Accelerators (LPAs) have emerged as compact (sub-)picosecond sources of Very High Energy Electron (VHEE, energy ≥ 50 MeV) beams. VHEE beams are of great interest to the medical physics community for their applications in radiotherapy in the Ultra-High Dose-Rate (UHDR) domain. Our experiments focus on optimizing VHEE beam stability and reproducibility from an LPA.
Using...
Radiation detectors based on wide-bandgap semiconductors, such
as single-crystal chemical vapor deposition (sCVD) diamond, have gained significant attention due to their versatility and potential for beam monitoring in demanding environments. sCVD diamond detectors, in particular, are promising candidates for high-energy particle physics experiments, beam diagnostics in accelerator...
Electron beams produced via Laser WakeField Acceleration, which relies upon several nonlinear processes, can be notoriously affected by a non-negligible pointing instability, which makes the retrieval of the energy spectrum via magnetic dipole-based spectrometers particularly prone to energy miscalculations. For this reason, various spectrometer configurations have already been suggested to...
Ultra-short bunch length measurements with femtosecond (fs) resolution are essential for characterizing electron beams in novel accelerator experiments like EuPRAXIA and any other short pulse accelerators, such as Free Electron Lasers (FELs). This contribution shows the progress towards a non-invasive and single-shot longitudinal profile monitor by showcasing a prototype of a broadband imaging...
The duration of incoherent XUV pulses down to the femtoseconds (fs) can be retrieved through a statistical analysis of the modulations on the observed radiation spectrum. Uncorrelated shot-noise fluctuations in the pulse temporal profile result in incoherent radiation showing a multispike spectrum where the spike width is inversely proportional to the pulse length. In this Letter, single-shot...
This presentation provides an overview of synchronization systems for plasma accelerators, focusing on the critical role of phase stability in ensuring the successful operation of these advanced facilities. We begin with an introduction to the fundamentals of phase noise in oscillators, including its sources and methods of measurement, which are essential for understanding the challenges faced...
EuPRAXIA@SPARC_LAB is the next generation free-electron laser (FEL) aimed at developing a compact, cost-effective particle accelerator based on the wake-field accelerator technology. High-energy physics demands higher acceleration voltages and advancing accelerator technology to higher frequencies enables the achievement of high gradients within shorter accelerating structures. The LINAC...
The global acceptance of proton therapy for cancer treatment due to the conformal dose delivery to the tumour and effective sparing of normal tissue, by the benefit of Bragg peak, has been significantly increased recently. This further lead into the development of advanced treatment delivery techniques such as proton FLASH therapy utilising instantaneous Ultra High Dose Rates. With the FLASH...
Ultra-short bunch length measurements with femtosecond (fs) resolution are essential for characterizing electron beams in novel accelerator experiments like EuPRAXIA and any other short pulse accelerators, such as Free Electron Lasers (FELs). This contribution shows the progress towards a non-invasive and single-shot longitudinal profile monitor by showcasing a prototype of a broadband imaging...
The development of ultra-compact plasma-based particle accelerators is primarily beneficial from the ultra-high acceleration gradient, which is achieved through coherent plasma wave excitation driven by high-intensity beams, such as photon or charged particle beams. The acceleration field in plasma wave is dependent upon the plasma density. The current state-of-the-art gaseous plasma-based...
