26–31 Jul 2026
Luskin Conference Center, UCLA
US/Pacific timezone

Experimental Design and First Results from the Plasma-Driven Attosecond X-Ray Experiment at FACET-II

27 Jul 2026, 16:00
20m
Legacy A (Luskin)

Legacy A

Luskin

To be considered for Working Group talk A6-Working group # 6

Speaker

Rafi Hessami (SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory)

Description

The ongoing Plasma-driven Attosecond X-ray source experiment (PAX) at FACET-II aims to produce coherent soft X-ray pulses of attosecond duration using a plasma wakefield accelerator [1]. These X-ray pulses can be used to study chemical processes where attosecond-scale electron motion is important. For this first stage of the experiment, PAX plans to demonstrate that <100 nm bunch length electron beams can be generated using the 10 GeV, 20 um duration beam accelerated in the FACET-II linac and using the plasma cell to give it a percent-per-micron chirp. The strongly chirped beam can then be compressed in a weak chicane to sub-100nm length, producing coherent synchrotron radiation in the final chicane magnet at wavelengths as low as 10s of nm. In this contribution we describe the results of recent experiments aiming to produce these ultra-compressed bunches and generate this single-cycle radiation, as well as the completion of the experimental setup of the PAX and early experimental measurements.
[1] C. Emma, X.Xu et al APL Photonics 6, 076107 (2021)

Working group WG6

Author

Rafi Hessami (SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory)

Co-authors

Dr Agostino Marinelli (SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory) Claudio Emma (SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory) Dr Jenny Morgan (SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory) Dr Kelly Swanson (SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory) Dr Kirk Larsen (SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory) River Robles (Stanford University)

Presentation materials