US and Czech Scientists Collaborate To Explore Gamma-Ray Production With High Power Lasers

The U.S. National Science Foundation (NSF) and the Czech Science Foundation (GACR) are funding a new collaborative project of scientists from the University of California San Diego in the U.S. and ELI Beamlines (Institute of Physics of the Czech Academy of Sciences) in the Czech Republic which aims to leverage the capabilities of the ELI Beamlines multi-petawatt laser facility. Researchers hope these experiments can achieve a breakthrough by demonstrating efficient generation of dense gamma-ray beams.

Stellar objects like pulsars can create matter and antimatter directly from light because of their extreme energies. In fact, the magnetic field, or “magnetosphere,” of a pulsar is filled with electrons and positrons that are created by colliding photons.

Reproducing the same phenomena in a laboratory on Earth is extremely challenging. It requires a dense cloud of photons with energies that are millions of times higher than visible light, an achievement that has so far eluded the scientists working in this field. However, theories suggest that high-power lasers ought to be able to produce such a photon cloud.

The P3 (Plasma Physics Platform)-installation at ELI Beamlines where the experiments will take place
Source: ELI Beamlines

As the first international laser research infrastructure dedicated to the application of high-power and high-intensity lasers, the Extreme Light Infrastructure (ELI ERIC) facilities will enable such research possibilities. The ELI ERIC is a multi-site research infrastructure based on specialized and complementary facilities ELI Beamlines (Czech Republic) and ELI ALPS (Hungary). The new capabilities at ELI will create the necessary conditions to test the theories in a laboratory.

This project combines theoretical expertise from the University of California San Diego (U.S.), experimental expertise from ELI Beamlines, as well as target fabrication and engineering expertise from General Atomics (U.S.). The roughly $1,000,000 project, jointly funded by NSF and GACR, will be led by Prof. Alexey Arefiev at UC San Diego. Target development for rep-rated deployment will take place at General Atomics, led by Dr. Mario Manuel, while the primary experiments will be conducted at ELI Beamlines by a team led by Dr. Florian Condamine and Dr. Stefan Weber.

“The P3 installation at ELI Beamlines is a unique and versatile experimental infrastructure for sophisticated high-field experiments and perfectly adapted to the planned program,” comments Condamine. Weber notes, “This collaboration between San Diego and ELI Beamlines is expected to be a major step forward to bring together the US community and the ELI-team for joint experiments.”

Thus, a major part of this project is training the next generation of scientists at ELI Beamlines to develop techniques that can fully leverage its rep-rated capabilities. UC San Diego students and postdoctoral researchers will also train on rep-rated target deployment and data acquisition on General Atomics’ new GALADRIEL laser facility to help improve the efficiency of the experiments conducted at ELI Beamlines.

Souce: ELI Beamlines