Recently, the Berkeley Laboratory Laser Accelerator (BELLA) Center in California, USA completed an upgrade, which expanded its capabilities to new areas of high-intensity laser science. The upgraded facility will help relevant scientific research teams to further obtain the data of extreme plasma and develop new cancer treatment methods.
After two years of installation, this upgrade has created a new test area, called "Interaction Point 2" (iP2), which will use the Paiwa laser in the laboratory to provide strong proton and ion pulses. This will build on the Center's expertise in accelerating electrons and low-energy protons.
"We are ushering in a new era of high-intensity laser experiments," said Cameron Geddes, director of the accelerator technology and applied physics (ATAP) department of Berkeley Laboratory. "This is a great milestone, which broadens the entire scientific scope of the facility and provides possibilities for our field."
It was revealed that BELLA had completed an upgrade earlier this year, when a second beam line was added. Researchers planned to stack laser power supply modules there to make small high-energy electron accelerators.
The BELLA laser system was originally built by Thales Group, a French aviation and defense industry giant, to provide 40 joule laser pulses with a duration of 40 femtoseconds and a repetition rate of 1 Hz, and a 10 Hz laser system with a repetition rate of 10-60 TW. The laser architecture adopts the chirped pulse amplification method. With the help of titanium sapphire crystal, the energy from more than ten pump laser sources will be stretched, amplified and compressed to generate high-power femtosecond pulses.
BELLA's recent research includes the development of a method to control the position and pointing angle of this high-power laser beam with minimal interruption or interference. The method is to transfer a small part of the beam to a parallel path and apply the measuring instrument to the "witness beam".
FLASH radiotherapy for cancer
The researchers plan to use the new iP2 in a series of research projects. According to Berkeley Laboratory, the first project will explore the creation of proton bursts for FLASH radiotherapy, which is to expose cancer cells to a short period of intense radiation bursts.
In 2020, researchers used the original interaction point iP1 of BELLA to observe promising results when applying the protons of BELLA to thin layer cells in culture dishes. They currently plan to use higher energy protons to study the effects of FLASH radiotherapy in thicker skin and tumor tissues.
Lieselotte Obst Huebl, the person in charge of the installation of the iP2, said: "We are studying the potential of using these lasers to accelerate protons and carry out radiotherapy, but we still need higher proton energy to penetrate the human body. This is a basic research that is still in its infancy, but one day it may become a powerful tool in our toolbox."
BELLA Center will also connect and participate in LaserNetUS network, which provides more opportunities for researchers in other places. LaserNetUS was created by the US Department of Energy in 2018, bringing together nine institutions to make high-intensity lasers easier to use in science and engineering. Researchers can now submit relevant proposals through LaserNetUS, and then conduct research in BELLA Center, and make full use of the newly expanded test area of iP2 in this process.
Source: OFweek
