Speaker
Descrizione
The extremely high electric fields sustained by plasma make the Laser Wakefield Acceleration
(LWFA) the most compact technique to generate very highly relativistic electron beams in the
MeV-to-GeV regime. However, the limited repetition rate and low efficiency of this technology
has, to date, prevented people from unleashing its full potential as a unique source for basic
research, biomedical applications and high flux sources of secondary radiations as hard X-rays. In recent years a new direction emerged showing the possibility to accelerate electron beams at 1 kHz repetition rate. We previously reported the acceleration of collimated, quasi-monoenergetic electron beams with record energies driven by a 1 kHz repetition rate, < 3 TW power-scalable OPCPA laser system. In this talk, I will show the actual status of the ALFA beamline for the acceleration of kHz beams that is nowadays open to users worldwide, offering on-demand in-air irradiations with high average dose rate (up to Gy/sec). The in-air beam profiling, pointing and dose rate characterization will be presented, highlighting the importance of the stability and the precision of delivering the electron beams, requested for medical applications such as radiotherapy treatments.
