The development of RF particle accelerators was undoubtedly the great achievement of science and civilization which allowed for unique observations being in line with the Standard Model theory. On the other hand, this technology reached its limits of performance and building RF devices which would allow for obtaining significantly higher energy is questionable from physical and economic point of view. Due to this fact, a development of a different acceleration technique became of utmost importance. The candidate method is Laser Wakefield Acceleration (LWA). LWA may offer drastic reduction in the size of the accelerator; however; it demands an enormous laser systems to provide both high power density and average power. Presently operating laser systems offer sufficient power density but the crucial obstacle to overcome is the repetition rate which circumscribes the average power and the number of the collision events. To deal with this problem the ICAN (International Coherent Amplification Network) project has been proposed. It is aimed on the construction of high power, high repetition rate fiber laser which would be efficient for LWA for the particle accelerator and other applications including XFEL, transmutation, nuclear waste management and fundamental plasma research. It is worth mentioning that all technologies needed for the development of such a device are presently available just need to be upgraded and combined into one operating system. This contribution is a review of the mechanisms of acceleration of charged particles, fiber and optical techniques which will be employed in ICAN and its possible applications and perspectives.

Date Published: 25 October 2013
PDF: 8 pages
Proc. SPIE 8903, Photonics Applications in Astronomy, Communications, Industry, and High-Energy Physics Experiments 2013, 89030N (25 October 2013); doi: 10.1117/12.2035369

Published in SPIE Proceedings Vol. 8903:
Photonics Applications in Astronomy, Communications, Industry, and High-Energy Physics Experiments 2013
Ryszard S. Romaniuk, Editor(s)