Research
Our experimental flagship is the ARCTURUS multi-100 TW- multi-pulse laser system at HHU. It provides three or more synchronized laser pulses for laser-plasma-interaction. These laser pulses are fired into a radiation-shielded area with several beamlines, vacuum chambers and experimental setups. Here, they generate and interact with plasma, creating intense and few femtosecond short multi-kilo-Ampère electron beams and associated X-ray radiation via laser wakefield acceleration. While these beams allow direct applications such as for imaging of ultrasmall structures and ultrafast dynamics in matter and biology, a main focus of our approach are beam quality and energy transformation stages. In our “hybrid plasma wakefield acceleration” scheme, the electron beam produced by a laser-driven wakefield accelerator (LWFA) stage is used to drive a second, electron beam-driven plasma wakefield accelerator (PWFA). This combines the best of two worlds: it allows exploitation of inherent advantages of PWFA, such as driving dephasing-free acceleration over extended distances at (nearly) the speed of light, as well as novel, intrinsically synchronized electron injection and beam generation schemes for ultrabright beam production.
Next to local experiments, we run experimental programmes in collaboration with various national and international partners, notably in the “hybrid plasma wakefield acceleration” collaboration with Helmholtz Centre Dresden-Rossendorf, Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich, DESY, and Laboratoire d'optique appliquée, and the “Trojan Horse” collaboration at Stanford’s SLAC FACET-II facility, jointly with University of California, Los Angeles, University of Boulder, Colorado, Radiabeam Technologies and others, and within the EuPRAXIA ESFRI project.