The BELLA Center Hundred Terawatt laser system for photon sources and user experiments

ORAL

Abstract

Thomson scattering of laser pulses from relativistic electron beams can produce MeV photon beams with narrow energy spread. Applications are foreseen in nuclear nonproliferation, medicine and other fields. We discuss performance, stability and alignment procedures for multibeam Thomson experiments using a Ti:Sapphire based 100 TW class laser system with two arms, dedicated to light source development. Both laser arms are independently tunable and compressible multipass-amplifier arrays (2.8 J and 0.7 J on target, down to 40 fs pulse duration, repetition rate of 5 Hz) with the seed-beam split off just after the common CPA stretcher. An independently tunable 40 fs probe beam is available in various configurations. Stable electron beams and Thomson Scattering have been established with further development ongoing. This flexible facility is open to users through LaserNetUS and successful user experiments have been conducted.

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Authors

  • Tobias Ostermayr

    LBNL, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory

  • Hai-En Tsai

    Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, LBNL, BELLA Center, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory

  • Robert Ettelbrick

    Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory

  • Liona Fan-Chiang

    UCB; LBNL, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory

  • Robert Jacob

    UCB; LBNL, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory

  • Alexander Laut

    LBNL, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory

  • Ocean Zhou

    Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory

  • Jeroen van Tilborg

    Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, LBNL

  • Fumika Isono

    Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory

  • Samuel K. Barber

    Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory

  • Remi Lehe

    LBNL, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory

  • Jean-Luc Vay

    LBNL, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory

  • Anthony Gonsalves

    Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, LBNL, Berkeley National Laboratory

  • Kei Nakamura

    Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, Berkeley National Laboratory

  • Csaba Toth

    Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory

  • Carl Schroeder

    Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, UCB; LBNL, Berkeley National Laboratory, BELLA Center, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory

  • Cameron Geddes

    Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, LBNL, Berkeley National Laboratory, BELLA Center, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory

  • Eric Esarey

    Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, LBNL, Berkeley National Laboratory