Speakers
Description
Electrons and light ions have been accelerated following the interaction of
an intense laser pulse with a plasma for about 30 years. Nowadays, Laser
Plasma Accelerators (LPA) are versatile sources capable of producing energetic
electron and ion bunches with remarkable propreties. LPA benefited from
the constantly increasing repetition rates of high intensity lasers that increased
from a shot per hour to the Hz firing rate today and 100 Hz is foreseen within
the next 5 years. Indeed LPA can be tuned to deliver particles with kinetic
energies of up to several GeV for electrons and that reach 10 s of MeV for ions
with charges approaching the μC level over accelerating distances of less than
20 cm or a few μm respectively. In the near future, they are poised to become
complementary to conventional accelerators for specific purposes.
Fundamental investigations are still necessary to understand the non linear
processes at play in some of these acceleration mechanisms but the vast po-
tential for usage led to the study of a number of applications in the past two
decades. After briefly describing the most common acceleration processes and
the properties of the obtained particle beams, the focus of this course will be the
generation of medical radio isotopes from the multi-particles LPA sources [3] for
internal radiotherapy and imaging. External radiotherapy using LPA bunches
will also be discussed as well as phase contrast imaging that benefits from the
unprecedented characteristics of these beams.
