EuPRAXIA Seminar with a focus on Laser Wakefield Acceleration

The next seminar in the series will take place on Friday 6th February at 11am UK time.  Dan Symes, Experimental Operations Manager for the Gemini laser facility, Rutherford Appleton Laboratory, UK, will present his seminar, Plans for laser-wakefield acceleration at the UK Extreme Photonics Applications Centre.

Dan Symes

About the talk

High power laser pulses can be used to create compact plasma accelerators through the process of laser wakefield acceleration (LWFA). The accelerating fields in the plasma can reach of order 100 GeV per metre, orders of magnitude stronger than the limits of conventional accelerators. Progress in laser-plasma accelerator technology has been rapid over the last few years, with demonstrations of long-term stable performance, an increase in repetition rate, and the adoption of machine learning techniques for source optimisation and stabilisation. This increase in performance and reliability is enabling the expansion of LWFA science from experimental studies to delivering sources for a broad range of applications.

The UK Central Laser Facility are constructing a new user facility, the Extreme Photonics Applications Centre (EPAC), aiming to become operational in 2027. EPAC will house a 10 Hz, 1 PW laser serving two independent experimental areas. The first area to come online will be configured as a long focus beamline, predominantly for developing LWFA in gas targets. I will describe our beamline design, development of targetry and diagnostics, and our plans for beamline commissioning. One of the goals for EPAC is to optimise secondary sources for applications, ranging from ultrafast x-ray imaging and spectroscopy to highly penetrating muon and neutron radiography. I will discuss our approach for developing these sources through collaboration with academic and industrial partners, including some examples of proof-of-principle imaging obtained with our existing Gemini facility.

Within the EuPRAXIA project, the contribution of EPAC will be to act as a centre for advancing research towards achieving a 5 GeV electron beam with sufficient quality for free-electron-laser applications. I will present preliminary simulation work exploring the feasibility of demonstrating FEL gain within the existing EPAC experimental area.

About the speaker

Dan Symes has worked at the Rutherford Appleton Laboratory in the UK since 2007, most of that time as the Experimental Operations Manager for the Gemini laser facility. He has a particular interest in the development of laser plasma accelerators for industrial applications. He has collaborated on pioneering experiments using Gemini to demonstrate the imaging capabilities of laser-driven x-rays in a range of sectors. Dan is now leading the design and construction of the laser wakefield acceleration beamline for the Extreme Photonics Applications Centre. Before joining RAL, Dan completed his PhD at Imperial College London in 2003 and worked at the University of Texas at Austin from 2004 – 2006. His research explored the physics of intense laser pulse interactions with microdroplets and clustered gases.

You can sign up for the seminar series here. 

We hope to see you online on the 6th February!