Activities

Main objectives and applications

The ITFIP team activity covers fundamental and exploratory research, making use of large scale facilities, to perform experimental and theoretical studies of laser-plasma interaction in the strong field regime, and of laser propagation and guiding at ultra-high intensity in plasma media.

The main application domains are the acceleration of particles to ultra-relativistic energy in under-dense plasmas, the development of new coherent, soft X-ray sources created by short pulse lasers and inertial fusion.

Research topics

ITFIP is actively pursuing modelling and experimental studies of electron acceleration driven by laser wakefield in plasmas. Several key issues for the development of future accelerators are being studied, such as intense laser guiding inside waveguides, the design of new plasma cells providing tailored density profiles, physical mechanisms for trapping and accelerating electrons in a plasma wave for multi-stage laser plasma accelerators.

This work is undertaken in the frame of the electron acceleration scientific programme of the Apollon Facility and contributes to the design and commissioning of the long focal area. The ITFIP team is involved in the coordination of working groups of the European projects EUPRAXIA (Design Study and Preparatory Phase) and ARIES up to 2022.

The ITFIP team uses Particle in Cell (PIC) numerical codes such as WAKE, FBPIC and Smilei and actively contributes to the development of Smilei. Experiments are performed using French (UHI100) and European (LLC, Lund Sweden, HZDR Dresden, Germany) laser facilities in the frame of LaserLab transnational access.

3D view of a simulation performed with Smilei illustrating laser wakefield acceleration of ionisation injected electrons.
Violet: enveloppe of the laser electric field;
blue: electron density; white: electrons trapped after ionisation in the plasma cavity.

Research topics

The ITFIP team carries out fundamental and exploratory research using large-scale laser and gas pedal facilities to study high-flux laser-matter interaction and particle beam transport in high-energy-density matter (HEDM).

Team members

Permanent employees

Brigitte CROS : CNRS Research Director
Francesco MASSIMO : CNRS Research Fellow
Jérôme FILS : Research Lecturer ECAM EPMI
Claude DEUTSCH : Volunteer Research Manager

PhD students

Ioaquin MOULANIER : EDOM
Lodewyk STEYN : EDOM
Oleksansdra KHOMYSHYN : EDOM
Mohamad MASCKALA : Research contract

Trainees 2024

Oleksandra KHOMYSHYN : M2 Grands Instruments
Mohamad MASCKALA : M2 Grands Instruments
Léa ESPEYRAC : M2 Grands Instruments
Adrian GUERENTE : M1 Physique et Applications
Thomas CLOAREC ; ENS Physique 1er année

Modelling activities

Modelling activities are strongly coupled to the experimental programme of the team on laser driven acceleration in plasmas.

Smilei and FBPIC PIC codes are mainly used to describe laser propagation in underdense plasmas, injection and acceleration of electron bunches in plasma cavities. In particular, F. Massimo contributes to the development of the open source code Smilei, in collaboration with several teams from the plateau de Saclay laboratories, LULI, LLR and la Maison de la Simulation of CEA. F. Massimo is also involved in the development of physical models and numerical techniques to make PIC simulations and their analysis faster.

Gas flow modelling to design plasma targets is performed using fluid simulation codes such as COMSOL Multiphysics and OpenFOAM. The comparison of these results with gas and plasma density measurements inside the target is crucial for the comparison with experiments and as input for PIC simulations, as the plasma density profile ionised by the laser is directly related to gas distribution.

Fluence measurements in experiments provide only a partial description of the laser field, which imperfections impact significantly the mechanisms of electron injection and acceleration in plasmas. To improve our understanding of these mechanisms, the team is developping fast techniques to reconstruct the laser electric field distribution from measured fluence data. This allows us to use a realistic laser distribution as input to PIC simulations and improve significantly the agreement with experimental results concerning electrons distributions in energy and in space, leading to a better understanding of observations.
Realistic simulations are also of interest to better characterise the laser beam properties and evaluate the sensitivity of electron properties to specific parameters.

The team develops numerical tools for experiments, for example modules using machine learning techniques to explore rapidly the large parameter space controlling acceleration mechanisms, and improve the properties of accelerated electron beams

On the long term, the team is aiming at designing complex experiment using “ab initio” simulations, including the design of an injector based on laser wakefield acceleration for the AWAKE experiment at CERN and future multi-stage laser plasma experiments. The objective is to simulate the various components of these experiments, ranging from plasma creation in gas target, to the transport of the electron beam to the user.

Projets

ALEGRO (Advanced LinEar Collider study GROup)

The team has been strongly involved for more than 10 years in the coordination of national and European projects scientifically (CILEX, EUPRAXIA, ARIES) and at the management level (Labex PALM, département PHOM de l’Université Paris Saclay, international strategy for accelerator development ALEGRO, GdR APPEL).

B. Cros is the spoke person of ALEGRO (Advanced LinEar Collider study GROup), which brings together at the international level about 80 scientists from high energy physics, accelerator physics, laser and plasma physics. The objective of ALEGRO is to coordinate international efforts to define a road map for future high gradient accelerators for particle physics, and propose joint efforts for the design of large scale facilities. This work is endorsed by the ICFA, the international committee for future accelerators.

European Plasma Research Accelerator with eXcellence In Applications (EuPRAXIA) project

The ITFIP team is actively involved in the EUPRAXIA European project which preparatory phase project started in November 2022, following the inclusion of EUPRAXIA on the ESFRI roadmap. The team is involved in the simulation programme that will define global parameters and the technical design of the facility, following leardership of the work package « high accelerating gradient plasma structures » during the Design Study of EuPRAXIA.

GdR Accélérateurs Plasma pompés par laser

At the national level, B. Cros has lead the GdR Accélérateurs Plasma pompés par laser, funded by CNRS IN2P3 from 2019 to 2023, continuing in the GdR Science of Particle Accelerators since the end of 2023.