Berkeley Lab

Facilities

The BELLA Center is equipped with state of the art femtosecond laser systems based on the chirped pulse amplification (CPA) technique. There are three main systems: the BELLA Laser at petawatt peak power; TREX at 100-terawatt-class peak power; and Godzilla/Chihuahua, a set of 10-terawatt-class peak-power lasers. Each uses Ti:sapphire amplifier media pumped by frequency-doubled Nd:YAG pump lasers, achieving ~40 fs pulse lengths to resonantly drive LPAs. Associated beam lines are equipped for studies including LPA-based free-electron lasers, staging of multiple LPAs as a way to achieve higher energy or for beam disposal, and controlled particle injection and laser guiding.

BELLA laser bay

BELLA laser bay

BELLA laser

Petawatt peak power at high repetition rate (1 Hz) driving multi-GeV LPAs

TREX laser

TREX laser

TREX laser

Cryo-cooled 60 terawatt at 10 Hz repetition rate driving GeV LPAs

Undulator

Undulator

TREX undulator beamline

Developing techniques to apply LPAs to seeded free electron lasers

Staging beamline

Staging beamline

TREX staging beamline

A modular approach to attaining high energies with LPAs

Godzilla and Chihuahua beamline

Godzilla and Chihuahua beamline

Godzilla and Chihuahua lasers

Dual 10-terawatt system for 0.2 GeV-class LPAs and injection control