Status of the LWFA at ELI-Beamlines (Invited Paper)

The laser wakefield acceleration program at ELI-Beamlines benefits from the future availability of four unique high power laser systems that make possible the investigation of LWFA in a broad range of parameters, ranging from mJ to kJ in pulse energy. The experiments driven by the PW-class laser systems L3-HAPLS (Ti:Sapph, 30 J, 30 fs, 10 Hz) and L4-Aton (Nd:glass, 1.5 kJ, 150 fs, 0.01 Hz) are performed at the ELI-ELBA beamline, and aim at the counter-propagation of laser-accelerated GeV electron beams with high intensity laser pulses. These experiments are designed to study novel regimes of electromagnetic field interaction with matter and quantum vacuum. The flagship experiment of ELI-ELBA is the experimental measurement of synergic Cherenkov-Compton radiation, which will reveal the properties of the vacuum predicted by nonlinear quantum electrodynamics and will require the operation of L3-HAPLS and L4-Aton at full power. The LWFA experiments driven by the TW-class high rep-rate laser systems L1-Allegra (100 mJ, 15 fs, 1 kHz) and L2-Duha (>3J, 25 fs, 50 Hz) are oriented towards laser-driven FEL development and applications in the biomedical field, and to investigation of interaction of high power lasers with near critical density plasmas. In the presentation, the actual status of the ELI-ELBA GeV electron beamline will be presented, along with the schedule leading to the commissioning and full operations. The activity in the field of high repetition rate LWFA will be also presented, including recent theoretical and simulation results, and the description of the experiments planned. Finally, recent design work towards a laser-driven VHEE radiotherapy device will be presented.