Future Compact Light Sources Using Laser Plasma Accelerators
Event Details:
Speaker: Dr. Samuel Barber
Program Description
For many years plasma-based accelerators have been proposed for the development of future light sources. The have several key attractive features like 100 GV/m acceleration gradients and an environment naturally conducive to the generation of high brightness electron beams that could be harnessed to enable the development of compact free electron lasers. Recent milestone results have demonstrated first lasing using plasma-based accelerators [1-3], but still more progress is needed to bring plasma-based FELs into the realm of reliable light source facilities. At the BELLA Center, we’ve recently achieved ~5000x SASE gain and greater than 90% reliability using a laser plasma accelerator (LPA) coupled to a vintage VISA undulator.
[1] W. Wang et al., Nature 595, 516 (2021)[2] R. Pompili et al., Nature 605, 659 (2022)[3] M/. Labat et al., Nature Photonics 17, 150 (2023)
