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

Session

A1-Working Group # 1

27 Jul 2026, 13:30
Ballroom A&B (Luskin)

Ballroom A&B

Luskin

Presentation materials

There are no materials yet.

  1. Kaikai Zhang (Amplitude Laser)
    27/07/2026, 13:30
    To be considered for Working Group talk

    Laser–plasma accelerators (LPAs) are rapidly emerging as compact and versatile drivers for applications in science and industry. However, their broader adoption is fundamentally constrained by the limited availability of laser systems capable of simultaneously delivering high pulse energy and high repetition rates.

    Amplitude has pioneered this field with a 10TW 100 Hz Ti:Sapphire system...

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  2. Tayari Coleman (University of Michigan)
    27/07/2026, 13:50
    To be considered for Working Group talk

    Gérard Mourou Center for Ultrafast Optical Science, University of Michigan, 2200 Bonisteel Blvd., Ann Arbor, MI 48109, USA

    Laser-wakefield plasma accelerators (LWFA) promise compact sources of highly energetic electrons and photons, but for their practical use they need efficient and high repetition rate laser drivers. The current standard is the Ti:sapphire CPA system, which can produce...

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  3. Tong Zhou (Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory)
    27/07/2026, 14:10
    To be considered for Working Group talk

    Fiber lasers have outstanding features including power handling, efficiency, and beam quality. Spatial and temporal combination of ultrafast fiber lasers provides pulse energy and power scaling (up to 10 J, 100 kW), a promising solution for driving next-generation kilohertz plasma accelerators and their secondary radiation sources, as well as for enabling new capabilities in beam diagnostics,...

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  4. Mahek Logantha (UC Berkeley/Lawrence Berkeley National Lab)
    27/07/2026, 14:30
    To be considered for Working Group talk

    The next generation of laser-plasma accelerators (LPAs) require a novel laser architecture to support multi-kHz and multi-kW operation for scientific, medical, industrial and security applications. Combining pulsed fiber lasers spatially, temporally, and spectrally provides a viable path to high peak and high average power. Such lasers can also upgrade beam diagnostics, shaping, and stripping...

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  5. Christopher Pasquale (University of Michigan)
    27/07/2026, 14:50
    To be considered for Working Group talk

    Next generation laser wakefield accelerators (LWFA) will require TW-PW peak power laser drivers operating at multi-kHz repetition rates [1]. This translates to 10s -100s kW of average power – orders of magnitude beyond current state-of-the-art LWFA drivers based on Ti:sapphire CPA. It is recognized that one of the most promising pathways for achieving this level of laser-driver performance is...

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  6. Mikhail Polyanskiy (Brookhaven National Laboratory)
    27/07/2026, 15:10
    To be considered for Working Group talk

    The 5-TW long-wave infrared (LWIR) laser at the Accelerator Test Facility (ATF) has been successfully recommissioned following a nearly two-year shutdown undertaken to upgrade the facility to modern safety and operational standards. The system is now ready for the restart of the ATF user program, featuring improved beam quality achieved through the implementation of BaF$_2$ amplifier windows,...

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  7. Jiří Šišma (ELI Beamlines)
    27/07/2026, 16:00
    To be considered for Working Group talk

    We present recent results on high-power guiding and laser wakefield acceleration (LWFA) in the ELBA beamline at ELI Beamlines, driven by the L3-HAPLS laser system (13 J, 30 fs, 0.2 Hz). By employing self-waveguiding in a 20 cm helium plasma channel, we achieved stable acceleration of electron beams to energies of ~5 GeV. A novel all-reflective optical setup, incorporating an off-axis...

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  8. Alex Picksley (Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory)
    27/07/2026, 16:20
    To be considered for Working Group talk

    Recently, channels formed by the hydrodynamic expansion of optical-field ionised plasmas (HOFI plasma channels) have received significant attention as suitable technology for efficient, high-energy laser-plasma accelerators (LPAs). In [1], we demonstrated high-quality PW-class laser guiding through 30-cm-long plasma channels, and controlled acceleration of singly peaked, quasimonoenergetic...

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  9. Jaron Shrock (University of Maryland, College Park)
    27/07/2026, 16:40
    To be considered for Working Group talk

    We present a new approach for producing monoenergetic, multi-GeV electron beams in an optically guided laser wakefield accelerator by utilizing a ‘π-step injector’. In this approach, spatiotemporal shaping of the channel-forming beam is employed to generate a short (≾drive beam Rayleigh range) null in the far field. This produces a localized modification of the channel structure which triggers...

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  10. Ela Rockafellow (University of Maryland)
    27/07/2026, 17:00
    To be considered for Working Group talk

    Laser wakefield acceleration (LWFA) in optically generated plasma waveguides has produced multi-GeV, high-charge electron beams. However, even in guided configurations, electron energy gain remains fundamentally limited by dephasing between the accelerated bunch and the plasma wake. In this talk, we present resent results demonstrating dephasing mitigation in self-waveguided LWFA through...

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  11. Ari Sloss (University of Maryland, College Park)
    27/07/2026, 17:20
    To be considered for Working Group talk

    Self-waveguiding of petawatt-scale laser pulses in optical field ionized (OFI) plasma waveguides has opened a new era in multi-GeV laser wakefield acceleration (LWFA) of electrons. As these waveguides possess mode structure, details of coupling of the LWFA drive pulse into the waveguide are consequential to the acceleration process. This talk presents results from experiments at L-ALEPH in...

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  12. Gabriel Brewster (University of Maryland)
    27/07/2026, 17:40
    To be considered for Working Group talk

    Optically generated plasma waveguides have recently enabled compact laser wakefield accelerators (LWFAs) producing multi-GeV, high-charge electron beams with sub-mrad divergence and pointing stability. However, nearly all demonstrations to date have operated at single-shot or Hz-scale repetition rates, leaving a gap between LWFA capabilities and the high average flux required by applications...

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  13. Tanner Nutting (Univerisity of Michigan)
    28/07/2026, 13:30
    To be considered for Working Group talk

    Laser wakefield acceleration is strongly influenced by the spatial and spatiotemporal structure of the drive laser pulse, yet the role of controlled wavefront aberrations at petawatt power remains largely unexplored. In this work, we investigate the effect of manually induced laser wavefront aberrations on GeV-scale electron beams and betatron X-ray emission produced at the ZEUS facility....

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  14. Evan Trommer (Stony Brook University)
    28/07/2026, 13:50
    To be considered for Working Group talk

    The plasma accelerator community has made impressive strides in developing methods to optimize beam injection schemes needed to make laser wakefield accelerators (LWFAs) viable for collider applications. One such technique is two-color flying-focus ionization injection, where a drive laser partially ionizes a gas and excites a nonlinear wake, and an injector laser with a much shorter...

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  15. Inhyuk Nam (Ulsan National Institute of Science and Technology (UNIST))
    28/07/2026, 14:10
    To be considered for Working Group talk

    A segmented capillary gas cell was developed to enable precise control over electron injection and acceleration in laser wakefield acceleration (LWFA). This system is composed of multiple capillary segments, each with specially designed apertures and independently supplied with gas, allowing the formation of tailored longitudinal density gradients. At the center, a narrower orifice creates a...

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  16. Aodhan McIlvenny (Lawrence Berkeley National Lab)
    28/07/2026, 14:30
    To be considered for Working Group talk

    Staging of Laser Plasma Accelerators (LPAs) towards high charge, high energy electron beams requires a stable first stage providing low energy spread beams for subsequent transport and acceleration. To ensure high capture efficiency in the second stage, the electron beam is imaged by an active plasma lens. High capture efficiency requires the beam’s energy spread to remain sufficiently low...

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  17. Bernhard Hidding (Heinrich Heine University Düsseldorf / University of Strathclyde / The Cockcroft Institute)
    28/07/2026, 14:50
    To be considered for Working Group talk

    The EuPRAXIA project on the European Strategy Forum on Research Infrastructure roadmap aims for “superior beam quality”, with plasma-based (X)FEL as flagship application. Such superior beam quality and XFELs can be achieved by a combination hybrid plasma wakefield accelerators and the Trojan Horse approach, key components of the “Transformative Innovation Paths” Work Package of EuPRAXIA and...

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  18. Lance Labun (University of Texas, Austin)
    28/07/2026, 15:10
    Poster

    To build a compact injector for free-electron lasers, colliders or storage rings, we require beam metrics that are difficult to realize together in laser wakefield accelerators. Experiments have demonstrated high charge and emittance control independently, but none so far has demonstrated sub-percent energy spread at high charge or efficiency. Although gas jets and shock injection have...

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  19. John Palastro (Laboratory for Laser Energetics)
    28/07/2026, 16:00
    To be considered for Working Group talk

    Laser wakefield accelerators (LWFAs) provide extremely large accelerating gradients for compact electron accelerators and radiation sources but are limited by dephasing, where trapped electrons outrun the accelerating phase of the wakefield. While flying-focus pulses can eliminate dephasing by driving a wake at the vacuum speed of light, these pulses involve tradeoffs such as varying spot...

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  20. Christian McCombs (Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory)
    28/07/2026, 16:20
    To be considered for Working Group talk

    Plasma channels formed by hydrodynamic expansion of optical field-ionized (HOFI) plasmas evolve on timescales that are computationally expensive to model using fully kinetic Particle-In-Cell simulation. Predictive modeling of HOFI plasma channels requires multi-species, multi-temperature compressible hydrodynamics with self-consistent ionization, recombination, and collisional energy exchange...

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  21. Christopher Doss (Inversion Semiconductor)
    28/07/2026, 16:40
    To be considered for Working Group talk

    Laser wakefield accelerators (LWFA) have been experimentally demonstrated to yield high energy and charge density electron beams within a compact footprint, making these sources attractive for a number of applications. The electron beam energy from an LWFA is limited by the laser’s stability in plasma as described by a few length scales, the most constraining of which being the diffraction...

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  22. Carlo Benedetti (LBNL)
    28/07/2026, 17:00
    To be considered for Working Group talk

    Laser–plasma accelerators (LPAs) can operate in different regimes, namely guided regimes—where laser guiding is achieved by means of an external waveguide such as a plasma channel—and unguided regimes, where the laser is self-guided over the plasma length. For a given (fixed) laser driver energy and wavelength, guided and unguided LPAs exhibit distinct accelerating gradients, stage lengths,...

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  23. Navid Vafaei-Najafabadi (Stony Brook University)
    28/07/2026, 17:20
    To be considered for Working Group talk

    Laser wakefield acceleration (LWFA) at low plasma density, $n_e \lesssim 10^{17}\,\mathrm{cm^{-3}}$, is highly desirable for generating high-energy electron beams because key accelerator figures of merit, including dephasing length and attainable energy gain, improve favorably as density is reduced. Near-infrared petawatt lasers provide a powerful route to high-energy LWFA stages in this...

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  24. Michael Bussmann (Helmholtz Zentrum Dresden Rossendorf)
    28/07/2026, 17:40
    To be considered for Working Group talk

    We report on new developments of the PIConGPU code with regards to coupling laser plasma accelerator simulations to large-scale AI models, ML-assisted date reduction, ML-guided optimization and surrogate modeling.
    We report research highlights in laser acceleration of electrons and adjacent fields to showcase the breadth of applications covered by PIConGPU. Specifically, we report on...

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  25. Qian Qian (University of Michigan)
    30/07/2026, 13:30
    To be considered for Working Group talk

    A laser beam carrying orbital angular momentum (OAM) is characterized by a helical wavefront, with an optical vortex in the center. Most applications of OAM laser beams, including optical prob-ing, particle manipulation, and communications, operate at relatively low intensities. Recently, high-intensity OAM beams have been generated using spiral phase mirrors, expanding their applicability in...

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  26. Abram Konzel (University of Rochester Laboratory for Laser Energetics)
    30/07/2026, 13:50
    To be considered for Working Group talk

    Spatiotemporal optical vortex (STOV) pulses feature a circulation of Poynting flux around a co-moving phase singularity embedded in their spacetime structure. The transverse orbital angular momentum (OAM) arising from this circulation extends the concept of longitudinal OAM associated with pure spatial phase singularities, resulting in distinct linear and nonlinear propagation behavior. Here,...

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  27. Chen-Kang Huang (National Central University)
    30/07/2026, 14:10
    To be considered for Working Group talk

    The transfer of angular momentum (AM) from circularly polarized or vortex laser beams to plasma offers a novel mechanism for controlling plasma morphology and self-generated fields. This work explores the collective plasma response initiated during tunnel-ionization, focusing on two ultrafast phenomena: spiral electron density modulation and axial magnetic field generation. Using an analytical...

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  28. MinSup Hur (UNIST)
    30/07/2026, 14:30
    To be considered for Working Group talk

    Plasma is a promising medium for generating high-power terahertz (THz) pulses, as it can be driven by extremely intense laser fields without suffering permanent damage. Numerous approaches have been proposed to convert the energy of a driving laser pulse into THz radiation using plasma as the conversion medium. The schemes such as coherent transition radiation (CTR) or two-color method, where...

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  29. Arohi Jain (Stony Brook University)
    30/07/2026, 14:50
    To be considered for Working Group talk

    Plasma-based accelerators can sustain multi-GV/m accelerating fields, but the strong focusing forces within the plasma channel can amplify small initial offsets into severe transverse instabilities known as beam break up (BBU) instability. Lebedev et al. [1] established a universal efficiency-instability relation for the blowout regime, asserting that the beam energy spread required to...

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  30. Ke Ou (Stanford University)
    30/07/2026, 15:10
    To be considered for Working Group talk

    We demonstrated efficient gas-phase diffractive optics created by interfering deep-ultraviolet lasers in an ozone-doped gas flow. These gas optics exhibit damage thresholds above $1\,\mathrm{kJ/cm^2}$ and can be used to steer high-power laser beams. Additionally, we demonstrated spectral and coherent beam combining with gas optics. Our results suggest a potential pathway for constructing...

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