The prospect of laser plasma accelerators for radiation therapy of cancer

Demanding applications like radiation therapy of cancer have pushed the development of ultra- compact laser plasma proton accelerators and defined novel levels of control, beam transport in pulsed fields and monitoring capabilities in experiments. 

In this presentation the status of the joint activities of the Dresden groups at HZDR running the high power laser Draco and at OncoRay, the national center for radiation research in oncology, will be discussed. Emphasis will be given to the energy scaling of proton bunches accelerated in the TNSA regime with and during ultra-short pulses, potential instabilities in the process, methods for online monitoring, and to the status of the ongoing upgrade of Draco to PW power level. 

Refs: 

1. Dose controlled irradiation of cancer cells with laser accelerated proton pulses, K. Zeil, et al., Appl. Phys. B 110, 437 (2013)
2. Direct observation of prompt pre-thermal laser ion sheath acceleration, K. Zeil, et al., Nature Communications 3, 874 (2012) 

About Prof. Ulrich Schramm :

Ulrich Schramm studied physics at the university of Heidelberg and received his PhD in 1994 for work in heavy ion atomic physics. Focusing on laser cooling of ion beams and beam ordering phenomena, he finished his habilitation at the LMU Munich in 2002 where he meanwhile intensified his research on relativistic laser plasma physics. He moved to HZDR Dresden in 2006 and was appointed director of the institute for radiation physics in 2011 where his main research interest lies in the investigation of novel accelerator concepts for radiation therapy and compact radiation sources and the corresponding high power laser development.