Speaker
Description
Relativistic electron beams from compact Laser Plasma Accelerators (LPAs) have unique and favorable properties that can be transferred to LPA-driven secondary radiation sources. Properties include the point-like nature of the radiation source, femtosecond duration, low emittance, high energy for deeper penetration, and large flux per shot. Combined with high-repetition-rate laser drivers and overall system compactness, this combination of characteristics can provide application capabilities unavailable through other means.
In this talk, I will focus on several key particle and photon products from laser-plasma accelerators, namely the electron beams themselves, muons from a converter target, betatron-oscillation X-rays, laser-scattered gamma rays, and undulator-based free-electron laser emission. The small source size and emittance ensure advantageous high-spatial-resolution lens-less imaging and tight focusing for charge delivery applications. The femtosecond duration enables high-temporal-resolution blurring-free imaging as well as applications where high peak-currents and near-instantaneous charge delivery are of interest. The high electron energy enables deep penetration and efficient conversion to, for example, muons that remain highly directional. In the context of emerging high-repetition-rate laser technology and deployable system engineering, I will highlight the community's efforts to field non-perturbative diagnostics and incorporate active stabilization concepts that further enhance robustness and application impact.
This work is supported by the DOE Office of Science, High Energy Physics (HEP) and Basic Energy Sciences (BES), under Contract No. DE-AC02-05CH11231, by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), and by the U.S. DOE National Nuclear Security Administration Defense Nuclear Nonproliferation R&D (NA-22).
| Working group | WG6 |
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