Friday, September 22, 1:30 PM
Cooley Baer Room

Michigan Engineering Department Merit Awardee for NERS

Director BELLA Center
Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory

Abstract

This talk will summarize the current activities of the BELLA Center on laser-plasma accelerator (LPA) research and applications. This will include a description of the newly commissioned extensions to the BELLA PW laser, namely the second beamline (2BL) and the interaction point two (IP2) beamline and target chamber [1]. 2BL provides a second beamline to the interaction point one chamber, along with the first beamline, where experiments are done on LPAs. The primary objectives are experiments on laser-generated plasma channels to yield electron energies near 10 GeV, and the high efficiency staging of LPA modules at the multi-GeV level. IP2 provides a new short focal length capability to provide ultrahigh laser intensity for experiments on ion acceleration and high energy density science. The BELLA Center also houses two independent 100 TW lasers that are used for a wide variety of studies, including x-ray generation by Thomson scattering and LPA-driven free electron laser research. Also discussed will be the development of fiber lasers that use coherent combining in both space and time to enable high average power at kHz repetition rates and beyond.

References

 [1] K. Nakamura et al., Journal of the Particle Accelerator Society of Japan 19, 205 (2023).

Funding Note

Work supported by U.S. Department of Energy Office of Science, Offices of High Energy Physics and Fusion Energy Sciences, under Contract No. DE-AC02-05CH11231, and LaserNetUS (www.lasernetus.org).

Brief Biography

Dr. Eric Esarey is the Director of the Berkeley Lab Laser Accelerator (BELLA) Center at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (LBNL). He received the Ph.D. degree in plasma physics from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1986 and the B.S. degree in nuclear engineering from the University of Michigan in 1981. He worked at the Naval Research Laboratory from 1986 -1998 and join LBNL in 1998. Dr. Esarey has published over 300 refereed journal articles on intense laser interactions with electron beams and plasmas, advanced acceleration concepts, novel radiation sources, and related fields. He is a recipient of the 2010 John Dawson Award for Excellence in Plasma Physics Research from the American Physical Society, the 2018 Advanced Accelerator Concept Prize, and the 2019 Directors Award for Exceptional Achievement from LBNL.  Dr. Esarey was elected a Fellow of the American Physical Society in 1996, “In recognition of his seminal scientific contributions to the physics of intense laser-plasma interaction.”