ARCHER2 Calendar October 2022

Particles surf on plasma waves excited by high-power lasers

Nitin Shukla, Instituto Superior Technico

* * * Winning Image and overall winner, ARCHER2 Image and Video Competition 2020 * * *

Particle accelerators are fundamental tools for science and society, enabling scientific discoveries and providing unprecedented insights into fundamental propterties of nature. Miniaturization of those machines would open the way to several applications, from light sources to cancer treatments. Laser wakefield acceleration is a promising candidate to achieve what is called a table-top electron accelerator. The idea is to use a powerful laser to excite a wave in a plasma, an ionized gas and exploit the strong accelerating fields of the wave to accelerate electrons. The picture depicts a laser pulse (in color) causing a strong modulation in the plasma density (in blue) and thus driving the plasma wave. An electron beam (witness bunch, in orange) is injected ito the latter and gets accelerated. The simulation has been performed with the Particle-In-Cell code OSIRIS on ARCHER in the framework of the HPC-Europa3 program.

This image was published on the October page of the ARCHER2 2022 printed calendar. If you would like to receive your own copy of the 2023 calendar later this year please sign up now