Speaker
Description
The Spanish Center for Pulsed Lasers (CLPU) [1] is one of the Spanish Singular Scientific and Technical Infrastructures (ICTS), hosting the VEGA laser facility as its user-oriented experimental target area.
VEGA system is a Ti:Sapphire Chirped Pulse Amplification (CPA)-based laser chain comprising three beamlines called VEGA-1,2 and 3 delivering up to 20 TW, 200 TW and 1 PW peak power respectively. These three outputs share a common front-end and operate at a central wavelength of 800 nm with pulse durations of 30 fs. VEGA1-2 operate at a repetition rate of up to 10 Hz, while VEGA-3 operates at 1 Hz. The facility also provides the so called AREX1 experimental area, which is open to the national and international scientific community for laser–matter interaction experiments through competitive access calls. Since the beginning of user operations in 2018, the facility has supported laser-plasma acceleration experiments and related research activities [2], [3].
Throughout 2025-2026, the facility has undergone a significant upgrade aiming the expansion of its experimental capabilities as well as the improvement of its operational performance. Within this framework, a new building has been constructed adjacent to the existing infrastructure, providing a second experimental area (AREX2) together with additional space for a future upgrade of the VEGA laser system. In parallel, several technological projects have been initiated in order to improve the overall facility performance under operating conditions approaching the nominal repetition rates of the different beamlines, while also enabling parallel experimental activities by exploiting the availability of two independent target áreas. These developments are intended to increase the overall efficiency of the facility.
The ongoing projects include studies of the high-repetition-rate behaviour of pulse-compressor diffraction gratings, upgrades to enable robust simultaneous operation of VEGA-2 and VEGA-3 beamlines as well as the development of advanced targe-handling solutions to support operation at the nominal repetition rates during future experimental campaigns.
This contribution reviews the progress achieved in these developments, presents the new infrastructure and experimental capabilities enabled by the facility expansion, and provides an overview of the upcoming user-access calls, including their expected schedule and main characteristics, marking the beginning of a new operational stage for the CLPU user facility.