Laser-Driven Accelerators, Radiations, and Their Applications

Dear Colleagues,

The recent progress of high-power laser technology, reaching peak power over petawatt (PW, 10^15 Watt), has opened up new ways of exploring new regimes of light–matter interaction. Especially the high-power laser can create a huge acceleration field in a plasma medium for electrons or ions that is an excellent tool for accelerating the particles. In the case of electron acceleration, laser wakefield acceleration (LWFA) has produced electron beams of multi-GeV energy with centimeters of acceleration length. One of the most important applications of laser–electron accelerators is the various radiation sources, such as betatron radiation, Compton scattering, THz radiation, undulator X-rays, and compact X-ray-free electron lasers. Recent developments in laser-driven radiations have demonstrated versatile compact radiation sources that are applicable to investigating ultrafast dynamics, high-resolution bio-imaging, probing the warm dense matters and nuclear excitations. In the case of proton/ion acceleration, target normal sheath acceleration (TNSA) and radiation pressure acceleration (RPA) have been proposed and experimentally demonstrated, which can be routes to building cost-effective ion therapy machines.

This Special Issue aims to take a view of the rapidly progressing field of laser-driven particle accelerations, radiation sources, and their applications. This Special Issue covers the latest developments of laser drivers and laser–particle accelerators, radiation sources based on the laser–plasma accelerators, theoretical studies on novel accelerator concepts, diagnostics for laser–particle accelerators, other laser-driven particle sources, applications of laser-driven particle beams and radiations, and exotic physics in laser-particle interactions.

Prof. Dr. Hyung Taek Kim
Dr. Daniele Margarone
Guest Editors

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