Ponente
Dr.
Jose Benlliure
(University of Santiago de Compostela)
Descripción
The Laser Laboratory for Acceleration and Applications at the University of Santiago de Compostela is a new infrastructure for the investigation of laser-plasma particle acceleration and the use of this new technology in several fields of application. In particular, L2A2 will focus its research program in developing alternative technologies for the production of medical radiotracers using laser-plasma accelerated beams of protons and ions. Another field of interest is advanced tomographic techniques using laser-plasma generated X-rays.
Decentralized production centers of radiotracers may open new possibilities, in particular for the use of PET molecular imaging in diseases diagnostics or in drug discovery. Laser-plasma acceleration could be the enabling technology to produce on-demand doses of PET probes of interest at low cost, in an automated, user-friendly device. The compact size of laser-plasma accelerators would reduce the capital cost of the accelerator and the required infrastructures. Further cost reduction would be brought by kit-based radiochemistry systems that are presently developed by the progress in microfluidics.
The realization of such a single-dose radiotracers production devices still requires important progress in many different areas. L2A2 aims at developing some of these technologies, in particular:
High-power laser pulse focusing and characterization systems.
Multi-shot plasma-laser acceleration targets.
Diagnostics of plasma laser accelerated beams of protons and ions.
The core of the L2A2 infrastructure is a compact ultra-short pulse laser system built by Thales (Alpha 10/XS) with two beam lines. Moreover, L2A2 is equipped with a laser laboratory, a clean room hosting the laser system, a radio-protected experimental hall and a laboratory for acceleration targets and beam diagnostics developments.
The main laser line produces ultra-short pulses (25 – 50 fs) with moderate energy (~ 1.5 J) and high-contrast (1:10-10 ASE) with a 10 Hz repetition rate. The initial use of this line will be TNSA proton and ion acceleration for activation purposes. The second beam line will produce also ultra-short pulses but with lower energies (~ 1 mJ) and higher repetition rate (1 kHz). This line will be used for X-ray production and particle acceleration using the 3 regime. Other applications of femtosecond laser pulses, such as micro machining, fabrication of photonic devices, microfluidic structures manufacturing, nanoparticles generation or fundamental studies on material structures, will be also developed using this beam line.
Autor primario
Dr.
Jose Benlliure
(University of Santiago de Compostela)
