CAREER: Coherent Laser Control for Compact Accelerators

这项职业奖将支持一项关于如何通过控制激光特性(如焦点质量)来提高激光驱动粒子加速器性能的研究。使用能够操纵和相干控制激光的技术，高亮度紧凑型加速器可以在单个桌面上实现，并立即应用于医用同位素生产和放射照相。这项研究与指导、专业发展和外展高度结合，旨在培训学生的实用技能，为他们在一系列技术职业中做好准备。该教育计划将利用与文化相关的框架，让代表性不足的人群参与进来，提供实践技能集发展，并增强学生自己提高加速器科学作为一门学科的知名度的能力。飞秒激光非常适合用作桌面粒子加速器，因为它们的脉冲持续时间短，能够在高重复频率下产生相对论强度。有了足够的强度，激光可以在光循环中重新分配电子，产生巨大的加速梯度，可以驱动先进的加速器。尽管早期的分析模型显示了GeV离子和数百GeV电子的前景，但实验还没有产生这样的束流。这项职业奖将使塑造飞秒激光波前和改变飞秒激光偏振的实验成为可能，从而开发出实用的桌面加速器。我们将研究高阶模式对电荷增加和光束发散减少的影响，机器学习将深入了解在这些高度非线性的区域中每个模式各自的影响。将利用大量数据样本和精确测量的波束特性对相互作用进行数值模拟。该奖项反映了NSF的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的智力优势和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估，被认为值得支持。

This CAREER award will support a study of how to enhance performance of laser-driven particle accelerators by controlling laser properties such as the focal spot quality. Using techniques that enable the laser light to be manipulated and coherently controlled, high brightness compact accelerators may become achievable on a single tabletop, with immediate applications in medical isotope production and radiography. The research is highly integrated with mentoring, professional development, and outreach, which are employed to train students practical skill sets to prepare them for a range of technical careers. The education plan will utilize culturally relevant frameworks for engaging underrepresented populations, providing hands-on skill set development, and empowering the students themselves to increase visibility of accelerator science as a discipline. Femtosecond lasers are ideally suited for use as tabletop particle accelerators since their short pulse duration enables relativistic intensities to be generated at high repetition rates. With sufficient intensity, a laser can redistribute electrons within optical cycles, generating enormous acceleration gradients which can drive advanced accelerators. Though early analytical models showed promise of GeV ions and hundreds of GeV electrons, experiments have yet to produce such beams. This CAREER award will enable experiments shaping the wavefront and modifying the polarization of femtosecond lasers towards development of practical tabletop accelerators. Influence of higher order modes for increased charge and decreased beam divergence will be studied, with machine learning providing insight into the respective influence of each mode in these highly nonlinear regimes. Numerical modeling of the interactions will be performed utilizing large data samples and exactly measured beam properties.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.