Using the interaction of ultraintense lasers with plasmas is an elegant and efficient way to produce beam of electrons. The first motivation, as proposed by Tajima and Dawson 25 ago4, was to demonstrate that we are able to reduce the size of accelerators, which tend to be gigantic and very expensive.

Our laser-based accelerator is incredibly smaller than conventional accelerators. At LOA, for example, we are producing 170 +/- 20 MeV high quality electrons beam in a length of only 3 mm long (versus several tens of meters for conventional accelerators with similar energies). Previously, it was impossible to control the injection of electrons in the plasma wave, as a consequence electron beams produced by laser had 100 % energy spread. The improvement of the beam quality obtained by the three groups (divergence, energy spread, duration) will open new perspectives in many fields as diverse as medicine, biology and chemistry.

Those properties are well adapted to accelerate electrons to even higher energies, while still keeping a high quality beam. We are hoping to reach 1 GeV in the near future with a compact device. This would be the energy range required for synchrotron light sources.

By Victor Malka LOA, ENSTA, CNRS, Ecole Polytechnique, Contact : This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.