The BErkeley Lab Laser Accelerator (BELLA): A 10 GeV Laser Plasma Accelerator

An overview is presented of the design of a 10 GeV laser plasma accelerator (LPA) that will be driven by a PW‐class laser system and of the BELLA Project, which has as its primary goal to build and install the required Ti:sapphire laser system for the acceleration experiments. The basic design of the 10 GeV stage aims at operation in the quasi‐linear regime, where the laser excited wakes are largely sinusoidal and offer the possibility of accelerating both electrons and positrons. Simulations show that a 10 GeV electron beam can be generated in a meter scale plasma channel guided LPA operating at a density of about 1017 cm−3 and powered by laser pulses containing 30–40 J of energy in a 50–200 fs duration pulse, focused to a spotsize of 50–100 micron. The lay‐out of the facility and laser system will be presented as well as the progress on building the facility.