TAU Systems, Thales collaborate on laser particle acceleration

TAU Systems, the developer of next-generation ultrafast laser-plasma accelerators, today announced the collaboration with solid-state laser producer Thales. The collaboration leverages Thales’ expertise in high peak power laser systems and TAU Systems’ innovation in laser-driven particle acceleration.

The collaboration will see the two pioneering companies offer for the first-time complete commercial laser-driven particle and radiation sources, generating from electrons or neutrons to X-rays and Gamma rays. These crucial systems, with the first one installed in TAU Labs Carlsbad, California, are complemented by an innovative beam-time-as-a-service proposal at the first of several application centers, and will accelerate research and development into many exciting and relevant areas such as radiation testing of space-bound electronics, advanced X-Ray imaging of 3D structures, and even novel cancer therapies.

Thales has been at the leading edge of laser system development for more than 40 years, manufacturing high-energy, flashlamp-pumped and diode-pumped nanosecond lasers for industrial applications as well as powerful ultrashort pulse Titanium:Sapphire femtosecond laser systems delivering power of up to 10 petawatts for scientific applications.

How TAU System’s Compact Accelerator Works
Particle accelerators hold great potential for semiconductor applications, medical imaging and therapy, and research in materials, energy and medicine. But conventional high-energy particle accelerators require plenty of space – some upwards of kilometers – making them expensive and limiting their presence to a handful of national labs and universities.

TAU Systems have built and rigorously tested a compact laser wakefield accelerator (LWFA), which has a wide variety of applications, and the full system could be contained in a volume the size of a shipping container.

This kind of compact particle accelerator could also be used to drive another device called an X-ray free electron laser, which could be used as a light source for beyond EUV lithography for even more advanced chip production as well as being capable of recording the dynamics of processes on the atomic or molecular scale. Examples of such dynamic processes include drug interactions with cells, changes inside batteries that might cause them to go into thermal runaway, chemical reactions inside solar panels, and viral proteins changing shape when infecting cells.

The concept for LWFA was first described in 1979. An extremely powerful laser strikes a gas target (e.g. Helium), heats it into a plasma and creates plasma waves that accelerate electrons from the gas, thereby generating a high-energy electron beam. Conceptually, the laser is like a boat skimming across a lake, leaving behind a wake – a plasma wake/wave – and electrons ride this plasma wave like surfers.

During the past couple of decades, various research groups have developed more powerful versions and Hegelich’s group holds the current record with a demonstrated acceleration gradient of over 100 billion volts per meter or 1,000x more than even the strongest conventional accelerators can achieve.

www.thalesgroup.com