Berkeley Lab

Research

BELLA Center research is primarily focused on the development and application of compact accelerators for subatomic particles. Laser-plasma accelerators, or LPAs, achieve electron energies at or above GeV in distances of only centimeters: an accelerating gradient thousands of times higher than is achievable through conventional techniques.

The BELLA Center drives advancement in LPAs via experimental and theoretical study of the interaction of intense laser pulses with gas, plasma and solid targets, and related applications and technologies. Major areas of inquiry are summarized below. We invite you to explore those links to learn more about our research.

This page tells about the background and motivation of our work with laser-plasma accelerators. For recent achievements, see the News tab at the top of this page. These review articles give technical and general summaries of our work.

LPA-based collider

   

High Energy Physics

Technologies for compact future colliders to extend the energy reach of particle physics

Thomson_concept

   

Nuclear Nonproliferation, Security & Science

Accelerators and systems to develop transportable sources of quasi-monoenergetic MeV photons

LPA-FEL

   

Compact Future Light Sources

Developing the next generation of coherent light sources based on laser-plasma accelerators

plasmasource_500px

   

Plasma Sources

Enabling technology for high-energy, high-quality beams from LPAs

modelling_500px

   

Computer Modeling

Advancing accelerator physics and computing with state-of-the-art simulation tools