Publikationsrepositorium - Helmholtz-Zentrum Dresden-Rossendorf

Particle accelerators have always been fundamental engines of discovery and drivers of innovations in industry, basic research, and life sciences. Exploiting the strong electromagnetic fields that can be supported by a plasma, high-power laser-driven compact plasma accelerators can generate short, high-intensity pulses of high energy electrons and ions with special beam properties. By that they may expand the portfolio of conventional machines in many application areas.

For laser-driven ion accelerators, the full application in ultra-high dose rate radiotherapy (RT) research marks one of the most important research objectives and is perfectly timed with the emerging interest on ultra-high dose rate RT. Laser proton accelerators are ideal instruments to investigate ultra-high dose rate effects, yet their ability to provide radiobiological in-vivo data comparable in quality to a clinical reference standard has called for demonstration for a long time.

The talk will introduce the concept of laser-driven ion accelerators and challenges of this technology. For the example of the high power laser source DRACO operated at HZDR, key developments for the production of reliable polychromatic proton beams with maximum energies of around 60 MeV are presented. Most recently, these achievements enabled the first successful small animal pilot study on radiation-induced tumor growth delay in mice using a laser-driven proton source and a clinical reference.