Advancing Plasma-Based Accelerators: From High-Brightness Beams to New Frontiers

by Chaojie Zhang

Tuesday 18 Feb 2025, 12:45 → 13:45 America/New_York

D-122 (SBU Physics Building)

The development of compact, high-performance particle accelerators is crucial for future scientific discoveries and applications. In this seminar, I will present my contributions to plasma-based acceleration, which offers orders-of-magnitude increase in acceleration gradient over conventional technologies. I will highlight two major achievements: the E304 experiment at SLAC, which recently demonstrated 26 GeV electron acceleration with unprecedented beam quality, representing a significant advance toward future collider and XFEL requirements; and the development of the Few-femtosecond Relativistic Electron Probe (FREP) diagnostic technique, which enabled the first direct visualization of microscopic plasma wakefields and ultrafast magnetic field dynamics in plasmas, now adopted by leading facilities worldwide. Building on these successes, I will present a research vision that integrates AI/ML-driven accelerator optimization, spin-polarized electron beam generation, positron acceleration, and compact X-ray Free Electron Lasers (XFELs). These innovations will advance both fundamental beam physics and practical applications, while creating exciting opportunities for student training and cross-disciplinary collaboration.

Videorecording (SBU-login needed)