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Ultrafast lasers play an increasingly critical role in the generation, manipulation, and acceleration of electron beams for High Energy Physics applications. Laser plasma accelerators enable order of magnitude improvements in accelerating gradient and promise compact tunable GeV electron beam sources, while novel photocathode systems permit fundamental advances in electron beam manipulation for accelerator and radiation applications Advances in fast feedback systems are required to stabilize laser performance at kHz repetition rate operation against environmental fluctuations. A field programmable gate array (FPGA) based digital control system, coupled with responsive optics, can provide rapid and precise stabilization of ultrafast lasers. A collaboration between RadiaSoft and the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory BELLA Center to develop, test, and deploy these systems across a range of beamlines operating at >1 Hz repetition rate, including 1 kHz systems, was created.

Laser driven wakefield accelerators produce accelerating fields thousands of times those achievable in conventional radio-frequency accelerators, offering compactness and ultrafast bunches to potentially extend the frontiers of high energy physics and enable laboratory scale ultrafast radiation sources. Realization of this potential requires understanding of accelerator physics to advance beam performance and stability, and particle simulations model the highly nonlinear, kinetic physics required. One-to-one simulations of experiments provide new insight for optimization and development of 100 MeV to GeV and beyond laser accelerator stages, and on production of reproducible and controllable low energy spread beams with improved emittance (focusability) and energy through control of injection. © 2007 IOP Publishing Ltd.

We have constructed a high intensity high order harmonic source delivering ~ 109 extreme ultraviolet photons/shot on a gas target and used it to observe multiphoton ionization and conduct femtosecond EUV-pump IR-probe experiments. Following excitation by 20–25 eV photons, we observed that the excited ethylene cation (H2C-CH2)+ experienced isomerization to the ethylidene configuration (HC-CHs)+ in 50±25 fs, followed by an H2 stretch motion. Experimental data and analysis from several other performed and planned experiments will be presented as well.

We studied ion fragment yields from EUV-pump NIR-probe experiments performed on ethylene molecules (C2H4). Through study of the ion yields as a function of pump-probe delay we resolve molecular dynamics on the excited electronic states of the ion. The breakup channel yielding CH+ and CH+3 indicated photo-isomerization to the ethylidene configuration (HC-CH3)+ on an ultrafast timescale. This configuration is predicted to be a transient configuration for electronic relaxation. We observed this channel, and found that it takes the excited cation (C2H+4)* 50 ± 25 fs to reach the ethylidene configuration. The transient ion yield of C2H24 + at zero delay (in combination with independent synchrotron experiments) indicates other ultra-fast dynamics in short-lived intermediate states are present.

We have measured the absorption of x-rays in neon gas in the presence of a strong laser pulse. The femtosecond x-rays were tuned to energies near the neon 1s-3p resonance, and the laser intensity of 1013 W/cm2 was below the intensity required to alone ionize neon. We observed strong modification of the x-ray absorption when the neon was subjected to laser light that was temporally overlapped with the x-rays.