Things are looking brighter than ever at the Berkeley Lab Laser Accelerator (BELLA) Center run by the Department of Energy’s Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory. A recently completed upgrade will expand the center’s capabilities into new areas, including studies of particle acceleration, extremely hot plasmas, cancer treatment techniques, and materials for quantum science.
The new experimental area, known as Interaction Point 2 (iP2), will use the lab’s petawatt laser to provide intense pulses of protons and ions – building on the center’s expertise in accelerating electrons and lower-energy protons.
“At iP2, we can focus the laser to a very small spot size, which makes it about 1,000 times brighter,” said Eric Esarey, director of the BELLA Center. “Creating this extreme intensity opens up a wide range of physics research and potential applications, like a new technique that could revolutionize radiotherapy for cancer treatment.”
Ad Statistics
Times Displayed: 7262
Times Visited: 23 Brand-New FDA-cleared Advanced Ultrasound Medical Device available for sale or lease to Wound Care Centers or any other Medical Facilities.The Arobella 1000D is designed for non-contact or debridement ultrasound wound healing therapy, or any other wounds
Following two years of installation, researchers successfully commissioned iP2 and produced high-energy ion beams this fall. The upgrade expands opportunities for scientists who use DOE’s LaserNetUS, a collection of laser facilities across the United States.
“We’re ushering in a new era of high-intensity laser experiments,” said Cameron Geddes, director of Berkeley Lab’s Accelerator Technology and Applied Physics (ATAP) Division, which manages the BELLA Center. “This is a great milestone that broadens the whole science reach of the facility and the possibilities for our field.”
The upgrade, funded through DOE’s Fusion Energy Sciences program, is the second completed at BELLA in 2022. This summer, teams also finished adding a second beamline where researchers plan to stack laser-powered modules to make small, high-energy electron accelerators.
Cancer cells, qubits, and magnetic tornadoes
Researchers already have a number of experiments lined up at iP2 that will take advantage of the laser’s high-energy and its ability to fire quickly (about once per second), delivering particle blasts that last femtoseconds (quadrillionths of a second). The system at iP2 can also focus the laser down to a minuscule size: about 3 microns, a fraction of the width of a human hair.
One of the first experiments will explore what’s known as the FLASH effect, a phenomenon where radiation delivered by protons in an intense, short burst can kill cancer cells while sparing the healthy tissue nearby. In 2020, researchers at BELLA’s original interaction point (iP1) saw promising results looking at thin layers of cells in Petri dishes. They now plan to use protons with more energy to study the FLASH effect in thicker skin and tumor tissue.
