Application programmes at the Scottish Centre for the Application of Plasma-based Accelerators (SCAPA)

The Scottish Centre for the Application of Plasma-based Accelerators (SCAPA) is a research facility dedicated to providing high energy particle beams and high peak brightness radiation pulses for users across a wide range of scientific and engineering disciplines. A pair of Ti:sapphire femtosecond laser systems (40 TW peak power at 10 Hz pulse repetition rate and 350 TW at 5 Hz, respectively) are the drivers for a suite of laser-plasma accelerator beamlines housed across a series of radiation shielded areas. The petawatt-scale laser delivers 45 W of average power, which has established it as a world leader in its class. The University of Strathclyde has had an operational laser wakefield accelerator since 2007 as the centrepiece of the on-going Advanced Laser Plasma High-energy Accelerators towards X-rays (ALPHA-X) project. SCAPA, which is a multi-partner venture supported by the Scottish Universities Physics Alliance, continues the dedicated beamline approach pioneered by ALPHA-X and represents a significant expansion in the UK's experimental capability at the university level in laser-driven acceleration. The new centre supports seven dedicated radiation beamlines across three shielded bunkers that each nominally specialise in different aspects of fundamental laser-plasma interaction physics and radiation sources: GeV-scale electron beams, MeV proton and ion beams, X-rays, gamma rays etc. Development of application programmes based on these sources cover a wide range of fields including nuclear physics, radiotherapy, space radiation reproduction, warm dense matter, high field physics and radioisotope generation.