SPARC_LAB (Sources for Plasma Accelerators and Radiation Compton with Laser And Beam) facility at LNF consists in a conventional high brightness RF photo-injector, SPARC, and a multi-hundred terawatt laser, FLAME, merging the potentialities of the former projects SPARC and PLASMONX.

 

The SPARC photoinjector can produce and accelerate high brightness electron beams up to 170 MeV, which feeds a 12 m long undulator for FEL generation. Thanks to the versatility of the photo-injector and exploiting the RF based compression technique, named velocity bunching, a tunable and high intense THz source can be also available for advanced longitudinal beam diagnostics and novel user experiments. Recently, we are starting doing studies and experiments on plasma accelerators.

 

The FLAME laser can produce pulses carrying 5 J of energy, compressed down to 25 fs pulse length. The ultra-intense laser pulses are employed to study the interaction with matter for many purposes: electron acceleration through LWFA, ion and proton generation exploiting the TNSA mechanism, study of new radiation sources and development of new electron diagnostics, and can be linked to the linac, i.e. in a Thomson back-scattering experiment, to generate a quasi coherent, monochromatic X-ray radiation or with a plasma target to obtain a betatron source with the  EuAPS (“EuPRAXIA Advanced Photon Source”) project.

 

SPARC_LAB is also involved in many international projects, in particular in EuPRAXIA and CompactLight. In addition, EuroLABS provides and funds access to SPARC_LAB to conduct experimental activities using the SPARC linac and the FLAME laser. More details can be found at the website or by contacting R. Pompili.

 

SABINA project (in the POR-FESR 2014-2020 grant by Regione Lazio) is strengthening the SPARC_LAB Research Infrastructure by upgrading its lasers and THz systems.