The Berkeley Lab Laser Accelerator (BELLA) Center offers two laser facilities to LaserNetUS users. The first offers a PW class laser with pulses of up to 40 Joules on target in as little as 30 fs at 1 Hz repetition rates. The second offers two amplifier arrays providing 50 TW class and 10 TW class pulses, respectively, in pulses as short as 40 fs (see BELLA HTW laser below).
The Center’s own research focuses on the development and application of laser-plasma accelerators (LPAs), which may provide user opportunities in use of the generated beams. LPAs produce ultrahigh accelerating fields (1-100 GV/m) and may provide a compact technology for a variety of applications that include accelerators for high energy physics and drivers for high energy photon sources. Electron beams at 0.01-8 GeV, and ion beams at a few MeV have been produced and measured. Femtosecond, keV band betatron radiation is produced from the acceleration process. Projects are under way to produce femtosecond quasi-monoenergetic MeV Thomson photons.