A laser-driven particle accelerator small enough to fit in a university lab could replace machines that currently stretch for kilometres. This project aims to shrink and cheapen the technology behind particle beams and X-ray sources, making them far more widely available. Today, facilities like synchrotrons and free-electron lasers are enormous, expensive, and oversubscribed; only a handful exist worldwide. The researchers plan to build compact, tabletop versions by exploiting the extreme electric fields in laser-generated plasma. They will also develop new sources of coherent and incoherent radiation—ultrashort pulses lasting just femtoseconds or attoseconds—and demonstrate their use in real applications, from imaging biological matter to probing nuclear physics. If successful, the work could put advanced X-ray and particle-beam tools into ordinary laboratories, hospitals, and factories, transforming how we study materials, diagnose disease, or manufacture microchips. The programme also tackles fundamental physics questions, such as how radiation and matter interact under extreme conditions—a regime relevant to astrophysical phenomena and fusion energy. As with past fundamental laser-plasma research, the practical payoffs may emerge unpredictably, but the immediate goal is to prove that compact, inexpensive sources can match or exceed the performance of today’s giant facilities.
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This proposal describes a programme of research on single-particle and collective radiation-beam-plasma interactions at high field intensities, production of high-brightness particle beams with femtosecond to attosecond duration, new sources of coherent and incoherent radiation that are both compact and inexpensive, new methods of accelerating particles which could make them widely available and, by extending their parameter range, stimulate new application areas. An important adjunct to the proposal will be a programme to apply the sources to demonstrate their usefulness and also provide a way to involve industry and other end-users. The project builds on previous experiments and theoretical investigations of the Advanced Laser Plasma High-energy Accelerators towards X-rays (ALPHA-X) project, which has demonstrated controlled acceleration in a laser-plasma wakefield accelerator (LWFA), initial applications of beams from the LWFA and demonstrations of gamma ray production due to resonant betatron motion in the LWFA. The programme will have broad relevance, through developing an understanding of the highly nonlinear and collective physics of radiation-matter interactions, to fields ranging from astrophysics, fusion and nuclear physics, to the interaction of radiation with biological matter. It will also touch on several basic problems in physics, such as radiation reaction in plasma media and the development of coherence in nonlinear coupled systems.
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