News

NEW RESULT

Targetry

SL-GT-10

A recent experiment co-led by CELIA/Univ. Bordeaux, CLPU/Univ. Salamanca and CEA/DAM/DIF at CLPU’s VEGA-3 1-PW laser system implemented the high-density gas jet SL-GT-10 and showed forward acceleration of helium ions to ~ 0.6 MeV/amu, likely originated from the rapidly expanding plasma channel created by the laser throughout the dense gas region.

Abundant generation of highly relativistic (well beyond the standard ponderomotive scaling) electrons mainly due to direct laser acceleration in the plasma channel was also demonstrated.

These results represent the best achievement ion acceleration using a PW-class femtosecond laser coupled with a dense gas jet and open up promising avenues for future applications that require large datasets.

NEW PRODUCT

Laser Beam Shaping&Metrology

SL-MPC

We are pleased to announce the release of our new product, the SL-MPC, a versatile multi-pass cell unit designed for efficient temporal post-compression of multi-mJ energy ultrafast laser systems. This is a positive direct spin-off from our KAIO-ACCELERATOR collaborative project with Laboratoire d’Optique Appliquée (LOA@ENSTA-X-CNRS, France) and Laboratorio di Irragiamento Laser Intensi (ILIL@CNR-INO, Italy), funded by the Innovation Fund of the European I.FAST program, coordinated by CERN.

With this unit, we can post-compress 7 mJ pulses from a 1 kHz Astrella USP laser (Coherent Inc.) down to 3.8 fs duration (measured with TIPTOE) with 60% efficiency, providing the basis for robust TW-class few-cycle laser drivers of commercial high-flux particle and radiation beams.

NEW RESULT

Laser Beam Shaping&Metrology

INSIGHT

LASY can read INSIGHT data for comprehensive laser plasma physics simulations

We are pleased to announce that INSIGHT output is now fully compatible with the LASY library, making it easy to realistically simulate the interaction between the INSIGHT 3D-reconstructed short laser pulse and a given plasma. In practice, the h5 file from INSIGHT can be imported by a dedicated reader in LASY that extracts the measured profile and writes it to a file complying with the openPMD standard. This file can be read with numerous simulation codes (FBPIC, Wake-T, HiPACE++, WarpX), regardless of their internal laser representation (envelope of the vector potential, self-consistent electric and magnetic fields, etc.).
LASY stands for LAser manipulations made eaSY. It is an open-source Python library to facilitate the use of realistic laser profiles in simulations. LASY is a collaborative project supported by DESY, LOA, LBNL, CEA, and other institutes.

Illustration : 3D rendering of a laser pulse reconstructed with INSIGHT, showing a ring-like high intensity region (orange) and fine details of lower intensity (dark purple). INSIGHT support in LASY provides access to the openPMD ecosystem of simulation and analysis tools, including the VisualPIC library used to generate this rendering.

NEW RESULT

Laser Beam Shaping&Metrology

INSIGHT

Hybrid multi-pass cell compressor with full mapping with INSIGHT

SourceLAB and the PULS group at Ruhr University Bochum successfully demonstrated high-quality post-compressed pulses at high energy.

Hybrid air-bulk multipass cell (MPC) is a robust and cost-effective approach of nonlinear pulse compression at high pulse energy up to 400 µJ eliminating the need for engineered GDD and pressure-controlled cells and employing standard HR optics instead.

We achieved strong spectral broadening without dispersion engineering or pressure-control inside the cell at 400‑µJ pulse energy. In this way, we compressed pulses from 220 fs to 27 fs at 40.3 W of average power and peak power of 10.2 GW. Our approach combines the strengths of gas-filled and bulk compression schemes and exhibits excellent overall optical transmission and spectral uniformity.

INSIGHT was used to investigate spatio-temporal couplings and geometrical aberrations of the compressed pulse. The measurements revealed that the compressed pulses exhibit outstanding spectral and temporal homogeneity, minimal spatio-temporal couplings, and excellent focusability, as evidenced by the high Strehl ratio and low Zernike coefficients.

NEW PARTNERSHIP

Laser Beam Shaping&Metrology

INSIGHT&TIPTOE

10 times faster data acquisition

SourceLAB and Institut de Physique de Nice (INPHYNI) have initiated an extensive collaboration to bring to the next level the shaping of short laser pulses for various scientific and technological applications.

INPHYNI will in particular investigate the design of versatile liquid crystal-based optical components, in order to spatio-temporally structure an input laser beam. Using INSIGHT and TIPTOE for the fine characterization of the output, we will then be able to quantitatively study how to prepare some exotic beam parameters (e.g. vortice, vector beam), specially tuned for novel laser plasma acceleration, such as vacuum laser acceleration, or attosecond physics in probing chirality for instance.

INPHYNI is a CNRS and Université Cote d’Azur laboratory, located in Nice (South of France). INPHYNI’s activities are dedicated to fundamental physics and innovation and structured around three axes: Waves and quantum physics; Photonics; Nonlinear physics, complex fluids, and biophysics.

NEW RESULT

Particle Sources

e-KAIO

Advanced Laser-Plasma diagnostics for turnkey accelerator

Driving a laser plasma accelerator at kHz rep rate requires a precsie control over the experimental parameters, from the laser spatio-temporal map to the target density profile.

Thanks to a large international collaboration, we have implemeted a well-chosen set of advanced diagnostics, and have successfully showed the suitability of the commercial Astrella USP (Coherent Inc.) for laser plasma scientific studies, by driving the e-KAIO-kHz turnkey accelerator for preparatory operations at high rep rate.

This work is a first important step towards the wide dissemination fo fully-integrated laser-plasma accelerator technology.

HIGHLIGHT

Particle Sources

One of the most promising projects of I.FAST Innovation Fund

Flash interview of Luca Garolfi (CERN & TERA Foundation) telling us about the Innovation Fund he is now coordinating on behalf of I.FAST. In 2022, this fund has allocated €1M to suistable accelerators projects, and KAIO-ACCELERATOR was one of the laureates. Our results to date are regarded very positively by Luca.

NEW RESULT

Laser Beam Shaping&Metrology

INSIGHT

10 times faster data acquisition

SourceLAB and CEA Saclay have recently developed a novel INSIGHT functionality enabling to fasten the data acquisition in the lab (up to a factor of 10), while preserving the spatio-temporal features of the pulse under study.

This Few-Shots module is of particular significance when the laser repetition rate is low : Few-Shots makes it possible to reduce the number of laser shot needed for an accurate Spatiotemporal couplings mapping, hence the reduced requested beamtime for metrology.

NEW RESULT

Laser Beam Shaping&Metrology

TIPTOE

Broadband temporal contrast metrology

TIPTOE can very conveniently proceed to time -resolved measurements of the pulse intensity.
This gives access to the intensity temporal contrast near the pulse, of great importance in laser plasma interaction for instance.

The dynamic range of TIPOTE for temporal intensity measurements is up to 10^7 over a temporal window that can span to 10 ps before the main pulse. The very broad range of wavelength covered by TIPTOE (200nm – 20 µm) makes the instrument a unique solution for such a measurement in the mid-IR range.

NEW RESULT

Laser Beam Shaping&Metrology / Particle Sources

Successful first step of KAIO-ACCELERATOR

The full energy output from an Astrella laser system (Coherent Inc.) was efficiently post-compressed by a newly-engineered multipass cell (MPC) down to 4.9 fs at 1 kHz repetition rate. Simple to align and robust in time, this MPC produces routinely sub-6fs pulses with multi-mJ energy, measured by TIPTOE
The validation of this first step was crucial to envisage an upcoming industrial-grade, tabletop and high rep rate laser plasma accelerator for practical applications.

KAIO-ACCELERATOR is our collaborative project with Laboratoire d’Optique Appliquée (LOA@ENSTA-X-CNRS – France) and Laboratorio di Irragiamento Laser Intensi (LILI@CNR-INO – Italy). It is laureate of the Innovation Fund from the paneuropean I.FAST, coordinated by CERN.

EVENT

SL 10

SourceLAB is celabrating with you a decade of innvation

We thank you for your kind and friendly video contributions to our 10th anniversary !
We will endeavor to honor your trust, and continue with your expert support to offer even more innovative products that make sense to you.

NEW RESULT

Beamline Engineering

SourceLAB delivers the ELI-ALPS SHHG-HF-PW beamline

Two years of hard work from the teams at ELI and SourceLAB have resulted in the successful delivery of the Surface High-Harmonics Generation High Frequency PetaWatt beamline at Eli Hungary, along with all its subsystems, and the achievement of the first shots on target.

Illustration: Fully integrated SHHG-HF-PW beamline global (top), and plasma mirror injection and high-harmonics generation (bottom) views

NEW PROJECT

Particle Sources

KAIO-ACCELERATOR is supported by the European program I.FAST (CERN)

Our great project KAIO-ACCELERATOR, in collaboration with Laboratoire d’Optique Appliquée (LOA @ENSTA-X-CNRS – France) and Laboratorio di Irraggiamento Laser Intensi (ILIL @CNR-INO – Italy), is laureate of the Innovation Fund from the paneuropean I.FAST, coordinated by CERN.
KAIO-ACCELERATOR aims at providing within 2 years an industrial-grade laser-plasma accelerator for practical applications. It is based on an innovative 3-block architecture, made of a tabletop high rep rate laser, a post-compression stage (multipass cell), and our turnkey electron accelerator e-KAIO.
We believe the success of KAIO-ACCELERATOR is the key step towards broad dissemination of cost- and energy-effective laser plasma technologies to universities, industries and hospitals
This project has received funding from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 Research and Innovation program under Grant Agreement No 101004730. I.FAST aims to enhance innovation in the particle accelerator community, mapping out and facilitating the development of breakthrough technologies common to multiple accelerator platforms.

NEW RESULT

Laser Beam Shaping&Metrology

TIPTOE

High energy and high repetition rate few-cycle pulses at 2 μm wavelength at Jena.

At the Institute of Applied Physics (Jena, Germany), post compression of a thulium-doped fiber laser output in a hollow-core fiber was achieved, delivering >100W average power, >1mJ pulse energy and <10fs pulse duration (measured by TIPTOE) at 100kHz repetition rate. It is the highest average-power mJ-class few-cycle source in the SWIR reported.

EVENT

SourceLAB is a partner of BLIN5

The 5th workshop on the ‘Beam Lines and Instrumentation’ (i.e. BLIN5) will be held in presence again this year at CALA (Centre for Advanced Laser Applications) in Garching during Oct 12 and 14. BLIN focuses on novel beam line components and instrumentation that directly address the distinctive features of the laser-driven accelerator (and associated energetic photon) system that can be essential for controlled delivery to applications.

NEW PRODUCT

Laser Beam Shaping&Metrology

INSIGHT Vacuum

This new model of the INSIGHT series makes it possible to directly measure under vacuum Space-Time couplings of laser short pulse. Such a measurement gives access to spectrally-resolved pulse properties very close to what seen by the targetry in real shot conditions. The settings of the laser pulse can thus be optimized according to the desired interaction.

NEW RESULT

Laser Beam Shaping&Metrology

TIPTOE

ELI-ALPS (ELI hungarian pillar) is using SL-TIPTOE to measure mid-IR ultrashort pulse duration. 4-cycle 120 µJ pulses centered at 3200 nm from a 100 kHz OPCPA system (Black Starzz, Fastlite) were spectrally broadened in millimeter-thick BaF2 and Si windows followed by recompression in CaF2 bulk and custom made dispersive mirrors with negative TOD (Optoman). Pulse duration below 18 fs FWHM (1.7 cycles @3.2 um, 70 µJ) is achieved, successfully measured by TIPTOE. For the reconstruction, a measured spectrum was used.

NEW RESULT

Laser Beam Shaping&Metrology

INSIGHT

A comprehensive experimental campaign exploring Spatio-Temporal Couplings (STCs) on high power lasers.
Spatio-temporal characteristics of various laser chains have been measured with new advanced metrology techniques. Among these powerful techniques, INSIGHT made it possible to reveal for the first time striking STCs that need to be carefully considered for optimal operation and applications of ultrashort laser system.

NEW RESULT

Targetry

Nozzles

A key aspect to harness laser plasma electron acceleration is the injection of plasma electrons into the laser wakefield. For the injection, a hydrodynamic shock produced by a blade inserted in a supersonic gas jet, to be ionized into plasma by the laser, is commonly used. Very practically, it is now possible to implement a new class of gas jet nozzles with embedded shocks, without any blade, so as to directly and very reproducibly inject the electrons. The overall setup of the accelerator is greatly simplified.

NEW PRODUCT

Particle Sources

KAIO

SourceLAB is proud to announce the e-KAIO-kHz, the latest commercial short laser pulse accelerator from our KAIO series.
Integrating most of our unique know-how in targetry and laser plasma technology, e-KAIO-kHz delivers electrons of very high energies at unprecedented repetition rate (up to kHz level).
Thanks to a sound engineering effort in designing this system, users have a fine control in real-time and under vacuum over all critical parameters needed for high-quality particles :

• control of the laser beam alignment in the box
• control of focal plane position
• control of focal spot quality
• control of gas jet position, density and profil
• control of electron spectral dispersion for precise diagnostics
• control of gas load for unlimited operations at kHz rep rate
  .