Sprecher
Beschreibung
The Centre for Advanced Laser Applications (CALA) in Munich is home to the ATLAS-3000 high power laser dedicated to research on laser-driven electron as well as ion acceleration and applications thereof.
The “Advanced Ti:Sapphire Laser” (ATLAS) is designed to deliver around 70J of pulse energy after compression in a ~27fs short pulse at a repetition rate of 1Hz. At this repetition rate, the system is well suited for parameter studies and optimizations with good statistics at state-of-the-art peak intensities. In addition to a DAZZLER and three deformable mirrors along the laser chain for spatial and temporal beam control, a growing number of online diagnostics are implemented for better monitoring. Efforts are currently ongoing to also install motorized mirrors for automated drift stabilization as well as prospectively stabilize the wavefront at high frequency. Most of the mentioned hardware capabilities, including the DAZZLER, are integrated into a central control system based on the open-source Tango controls framework [1]. This makes operations easier for the experimenter, facilitates unified data acquisition for later offline evaluation, and also enables online feedback and automated optimization which has been demonstrated for electron performance [2] as well as ion acceleration in first studies.
In the laser ion acceleration experiment area (LION), these laser pulses are focused to intensities exceeding $10^{21} W/cm²$ for ion acceleration, mainly protons. The large target chamber allows for versatile setups, but the current workhorse is a liquid leaf target comprised of two colliding water jets positioned in the laser focus in vacuum. This makes for a highly stable, repetitive solid density target of few-micrometer to submicron thickness. The work group also focuses on online detection methods such as a magnetic ion spectrometer with large size CMOS detector for online readout, as well as the I-BEAT detector (“ion-bunch energy acoustic tracing”) measuring the acoustic waves generated by ion bunches stopping in a water volume to characterize the bunch properties [3]. Again, many diagnostics are integrated into the central control system for unified data acquisition and first studies on online optimization of both laser and experiment parameters have been conducted.
This contribution will showcase the current capabilities of the laser, the LION experiment area, and the control system with emphasis on current and future machine automation and optimization projects. This work was funded by BMBF (projects 01IS17048, 01IS24028), DFG (grants 416702141, 491853809), GSI (project GSI-LMSCH2025) and China Scholarship Council.
[1] https://www.tango-controls.org/
[2] F Irshad, et al. Pareto Optimization and Tuning of a Laser Wakefield Accelerator. Phys. Rev. Lett. 133, 085001. doi:10.1103/PhysRevLett.133.085001
[3] S Gerlach, et al. Three-dimensional acoustic monitoring of laser-accelerated protons in the focus of a pulsed-power solenoid lens. High Power Laser Science and Engineering. 2023;11:e38. doi:10.1017/hpl.2023.16
