Miniaturized laser-driven structures employing dielectrics have attracted great interest due to their high breakdown threshold compared to metals, alongside with the availability of powerful, stable laser sources and fabrication technologies developed for telecommunications. This contribution introduces a comprehensive methodology for the design of co-linear accelerating structures. The extended co-linear propagation of both electromagnetic field (laser) and particles offers superior scalability and performance compared to transverse parallel illumination. Physics-Based (PB) and Inverse-Design (ID) approaches entail the design of an adiabatically-tapered synchronous structure, customized for both relativistic and non-relativistic accelerating particles. PB and ID methodologies have the potential not only to enable continuous acceleration from sub-relativistic to relativistic velocities, but also to provide transverse focusing capabilities.

We provide an overview of our research concerning Physics-Based (PB) and Inverse-Design (ID) methodologies in the development of co-linear adiabatically-tapered synchronous integrated optics structures for particle acceleration. Extended interaction structures, wherein the laser electromagnetic-field guided mode and particles propagate in the same direction, offer superior scalability and performance compared to configurations with transverse illumination. We demonstrate that PB and ID methodologies are versatile for both relativistic and non-relativistic accelerating particles, with ID showing a promising potential for transverse focusing.

The interest in plasma-based accelerators as drivers of user facilities is growing worldwide thanks to their compactness and reduced costs. The EuPRAXIA@SPARC_LAB collaboration is preparing a technical design report for a multi-GeV plasma-based accelerator with outstanding electron beam quality to pilot an X-ray FEL, the most demanding in terms of beam brightness. The beam dynamics has been studied aiming to a reliable operation of the RF injector to generate a so-called comb-beam with 500 MeV energy suitable as driver of the Beam-driven Plasma Wakefield Accelerator. A case of interest is the generation of a trailing bunch with 1 GeV energy, less than 1 mm-mrad transverse emittance and up to 2 kA peak current at the undulator entrance. The comb-beam is generated through the velocity bunching technique, an RF compression tool that enables high brightness beams within relatively compact machine. Since it is based on a rotation of the beam phase space inside the external RF fields, it could be particularly sensitive to amplitude and phase jitters in the RF injector. The electron beam dynamics and the machine sensitivity to the possible jitters are presented in terms of effect on the beam quality so to provide the basis for the jitter tolerances.

The development of compact accelerator facilities providing high-brightness beams is one of the most challenging tasks in the field of next-generation compact and cost affordable particle accelerators. Recent results obtained at SPARC_LAB show evidence of the FEL laser by a compact (3 cm) particle driven plasma-based accelerator. This work is carried out in the framework of the SPARC_LAB activities concerning the R&D on plasma wakefield accelerators for the realization of new compact plasma based facilities, i.e EuPRAXIA@SPARC_LAB. The work here presented is a theoretical study demonstrating a possible scheme concerning the implementation of an innovative array of discharge capillaries, operating as active-plasma lenses, and one collimator to build an unconventional transport line for bunches outgoing from plasma accelerating module. Taking advantage of the symmetric and linear focusing provided by an active-plasma lens, the witness is captured and transported along the array without affecting its quality at the exit of the plasma module. At the same time the driver, being over-focused in the same array, can be removed by means of a collimator.

The Southern European Thomson back-scattering source for Applied Research (STAR) is a high-energy photon facility located on the campus of the University of Calabria (UniCal). The facility was designed for its first phase to operate with an electron and photon energy up to 85 MeV and 140 keV respectively. For the second phase of the project the energy of the electrons, and thereby the photons, would be increased up to 150 MeV and 350 keV respectively. The Italian Institute for Nuclear Physics (INFN) was awarded the project for installing, testing, and commissioning the energy upgrade of the electron beamline. In this article, we will outline the progress of this upgrade. In particular the completion of the site acceptance test of the RF system and the IT infrastructure combined with the control system software.

The stability and the quality of particle beams are of utmost importance for many emerging linac installations. The impact on beam properties damage of beam electromagnetic element misalignments and jitter/fluctuations in various accelerator sub-systems should be properly known, as usually such shot-to-shot fluctuations cannot be avoided. On top of that, knowing which parameters the machine is most sensitive to is of utmost to take precautionary measures to reduce the beam degradation and thus improve beam stability and quality. This simulation work focuses on a 50 MeV S-band linear accelerator based on RF photoinjector electron source. The sensitivity of the beam parameters towards several errors has been studied collectively as well as individually for each accelerator element. While the emittance at the end of the linac is dominated by the laminar behavior in the accelerating section, the main emittance degradation comes mainly from orbit errors located at the linac entrance.

This paper explores the transition between Compton Scattering and Inverse Compton Scattering (ICS), which is characterized by an equal exchange of energy and momentum between the colliding particles (electrons and photons). This regime has been called Symmetric Compton Scattering (SCS) and has the unique property of eliminating the energy-angle correlation of scattered photons, and, when the electron recoil is large, transferring monochromaticity from one colliding beam to the other, resulting in back-scattered photon beams that are intrinsically monochromatic. The paper suggests that large-recoil SCS or quasi-SCS can be used to design compact intrinsic monochromatic γ-ray sources based on compact linacs, thus avoiding the use of GeV-class electron beams together with powerful laser/optical systems as those typically required for ICS sources. Furthermore, at low recoil and low energy collisions (in the 10 keV energy range), SCS can be exploited to heat the colliding electron beam, which is widely scattered with large transverse momenta over the entire solid angle, offering a technique to trap electrons into magnetic bottles for plasma heating.

This paper presents a new approach to space charge dominated beamline design using an artificial intelligence (AI)-based optimization code named giotto. The code incorporates advanced algorithms for multiobjective genetic optimizations in particle accelerators, allowing efficient exploration of the parameter space and improved beam quality. The study demonstrates the application of giotto in the design of a high-brightness injector for an Energy Recovery Linac (ERL) called BriXSinO. The optimized injector features a low energy (4.5 MeV) and relatively high bunch charge (100 pC) operation. The results show promising beam parameters comparable to other ERL projects. Furthermore, the paper introduces innovative techniques, including bunches back-rotation the use of Lorentzian distributions in the fitness function. The approach successfully achieves dispersion closure in a space charge dominated dogleg. Overall, this work contributes to the advancement of accelerator science, offering a powerful methodology for beamline design and optimization. The new techniques and methodologies introduced have the potential to enhance the performance and stability of particle accelerators in various applications.

This paper explores the transition between Compton Scattering and Inverse Compton Scattering (ICS), which is characterized by an equal exchange of energy and momentum between the colliding particles (electrons and photons). This regime has been called Symmetric Compton Scattering (SCS) and has the unique property of cancelling the energy-angle correlation of scattered photons, and, when the electron recoil is large, transferring mono-chromaticity from one colliding beam to the other, resulting in back-scattered photon beams that are intrinsically monochromatic. The paper suggests that large-recoil SCS or quasi-SCS can be used to design compact intrinsic monochromatic gamma-ray sources based on compact linacs, thus avoiding the use of GeV-class electron beams together with powerful laser/optical systems as those typically required for ICS sources.

We present the design study of an innovative scheme to generate high repetition rate (multi-MHz-class) THz radiation pulses by using an Energy Recovered Super Conducting Linac operating in Continuous Wave mode driving a Free-Electron Laser Oscillator. The FEL performance is illustrated for one and two color operation. Start-to-end simulations are presented to assess the capability of this scheme for typical values of wavelengths of interest in the 10-50 mu m (6-30 THz) range.

Particle acceleration in microstructures driven by ultrafast solid state lasers is a rapidly evolving area of advanced accelerator research, leading to a variety of concepts based on planar-symmetric dielectric gratings, hollow core fibers, photonic crystals, and plasmonic meta-surfaces. This approach leverages well-established industrial fabrication capabilities and the commercial availability of tabletop lasers to reduce cost, with demonstrated axial accelerating fields in the GV/m range. Wide-ranging international efforts have significantly improved understanding of gradient limits, structure design, particle focusing and transport, staging, and development of compatible low-emittance electron sources. With a near-term focus on low-current MeV-scale applications for compact scientific and medical instruments, as well as novel diagnostics capabilities, structure-based laser-driven accelerators have several key benefits that warrant consideration for future high-energy physics machines, including low beamstrahlung energy loss, modest power requirements, stability, and readiness of supporting technologies.

Figure 20.1 was not correct in the published article. The original article has been corrected. The published apologizes for the inconvenience.

This Document contains a complete technical description of the system devoted to the upgrade of the STAR Linear Accelerator (STAR Linac). According to the Contract signed between Universita della Calabria (UniCal) and Istituto Nazionale di Fisica Nucleare (INFN) on May 7th, 2021, INFN is committed to install, test and commission the upgrade of the STAR Linac denominated STAR-HE-Linac (STAR High Energy Linac), hereafter STAR-HEL. The technical components as well as the installation / test procedures and the ancillary equipment involved in such an upgrade are the object of this Document, named Complete Detailed Design Report. A technical offer was submitted by INFN in the frame of its participation to the tender issued by UniCal, describing a possible energy upgrade of the STAR Linac, with an electron beam energy boosted from 65 MeV up to 150 MeV by means of Radiofrequency (RF) accelerating sections and power stations based on S-band technology (ie, 2856 MHz RF frequency). Following the Contract signature, INFN conceived and conceptually designed a technology change that offers several advantages both on performances and on operational reliability of STAR-HEL, based on adopting C-band technology (ie, 5712 MHz RF frequency) for accelerating sections and RF power stations. Such a technology change was illustrated in a dedicated document named"improvement option for STAR-2 HE-Linac", addressed to UniCal STAR Management Board and tender R.U.P. for approval on June 9th, 2021. INFN received a formal letter of approval on June 16th, 2021.

Hollow core dielectric microstructures powered by lasers represent a new and promising area of accelerator research thanks to the higher damage threshold and accelerating gradients with respect to metals at optical wavelengths. In this paper we present the design of a dielectric Electromagnetic Band Gap (EBG) mode converter for high-power coupling of the accelerating mode in Dielectric Laser Accelerators (DLAs). The design is wavelength-independent, and here we propose an implementation operating at 90.505 GHz (wavelength 3.3 mm) based on a silicon woodpile structure. The coupler is composed by two perpendicularly coupled hollow-core waveguides: a TE-like mode waveguide (excited from RF/laser power) and a TM-like mode accelerating waveguide. The structure has been numerically designed and optimized, presenting Insertion Losses (IL) < 0.3 dB and an efficient mode conversion in the operating bandwidth. The properties and effectiveness of the confined accelerating mode have been optimized in order to derive the needed accelerating gradient. The simulated electric field has been used as input for Astra beam-dynamics simulations in order to compute the beam properties. INTRODUCTION AND MOTIVATION The latest years advancements in the fields of laser technology and the latest achievements in the design of dielectric Photonic-Crystal devices have been driving a growing interest in Dielectric Laser Accelerators microstructures [1]. Thanks to the low ohmic-losses and the higher breakdown thresholds of the dielectrics with respect to the conventional metallic RF Linear Accelerators, the DLAs show a significant improvement of the acceleration gradient (in the GV/m regime), leading also to scaled size devices and thus to orders of magnitude costs reduction with respect to the RF metallic accelerating structures [2]. For these reasons, several periodic structures have been proposed for laser-driven acceleration: photonic bandgap (PBG) fibers [3], side-coupled non-co-linear structures [4], ∗ mauro@lns.infn.it 3D woodpile geometries [5], metamaterials-based optical dielectric accelerators [6]. Among these structures, we chose the woodpile since it exhibits a fully 3D frequency band-gap and because of its versatility that allows a simple optimization of the e. m. performances. Hereinafter, a silicon Electromagnetic Bandgap (EBG) woodpile hollow-core waveguide structure side-coupler (or mode launcher-converter) design is presented. The full device is visible in Fig. 1(a). The TE10-mode wave is injected into a metallic waveguide which splits into two branches that arrives to the woodpile mode converter section. Here the two waves are converted into the fundamental accelerating TM01-like mode, which propagates along the hollow-core central accelerating waveguide (beam channel). When the wave reaches the end of the accelerating waveguide, it is back-converted into two waves which are picked-up by a second mode converter and driven out of the structure. This mode launcher design finds strong analogies with the travelling wave ones used for metallic LINACs where the input coupler, consisting of one or more rectangular waveguides, is realized by one (or more) slot that connects to the coupling cell [7–9]. HOLLOW-CORE WOODPILE COUPLER DESIGN The woodpile structure is based on the 3D photonic crystal lattice which consists of a combination of high-index dielectric bricks (silicon with εr = 11 in our work) immersed in vacuum background, stacked layer-by-layer, each layer rotated 90∘ with respect to the layer below and offset half a lattice period from the layer 2h below [10], as shown in Fig. 1(a). The structure has fundamental dimensions w, h, and d which represent the brick width, height and spacing between adjacent brick centers (the so called PhC period). As already recalled in electromagnetism, there are simple relationships between problems that differ for a contraction or an expansion [10, p. 20] and the woodpile electromagnetic design can be scaled to any desired working frequency by choosing the appropriate structure period d: the other dimensions are given in relation to d and are chosen in simulation with the objective of band-gap maximization. 12th Int. Particle Acc. Conf. IPAC2021, Campinas, SP, Brazil JACoW Publishing ISBN: 978-3-95450-214-1 ISSN: 2673-5490 doi:10.18429/JACoW-IPAC2021-TUPAB246 TUPAB246 C on te nt fr om th is w or k m ay be us ed un de rt he te rm s of th e C C B Y 3. 0 lic en ce (© 20 21 ). A ny di st ri bu tio n of th is w or k m us tm ai nt ai n at tr ib ut io n to th e au th or (s ), tit le of th e w or k, pu bl is he r, an d D O I 2022 MC5: Beam Dynamics and EM Fields D03 Calculations of EM Fields Theory and Code Developments

In this paper we discuss the possibility to generate and accelerate proton nanobeams in fully dielectric laser-driven accelerators (p-DLAs). High gradient on-chip optical-power dielectric laser accelerators (DLAs) could represent one of the most promising way towards future miniaturized particle accelerator. A primary challenge for DLAs are small beam apertures having a size of the order of the driving laser wavelength where low charge high-repetition (or also CW) ultralow emittance nanobeams have to be transported. For electrons beams generation and acceleration, intense research activities are ongoing, and several demonstrations have been already obtained by using electrons nanotip (or flat photocathode) sources feeding dielectric microstructures. In this article we aim at the possibility to integrate a nanosource for the generation of a light ion or proton nano-beams suitable for the subsequent acceleration into sub-relativistic (low-beta) p-DLA stages. Such integration includes the idea to use a proton dielectric radiofrequency quadrupole (p-DRFQ) for bridging the gap between the accelerator front-end and the drift-tube and high-beta sections. The paper has been prepared as a white book including state-of-art technologies and new solutions that now put the ambitious frontier of a fully nanostructured proton accelerator into reach. Conceptual studies of p-DLAs here presented could enable table-top proton nano-beams for several applications: proton beam writing, nuclear reaction analysis at sub-micrometer scales, the construction of miniaturized Proton-Boron Nuclear Fusion based Reactors, biological analysis at the micrometer scale, ion beam analysis at the sub-cellular level, mini-beams ion therapy to spare the shallow tissues, proton irradiation of transistors, compact proton linac for neutron generation.

In the framework of the preparatory activities to the BriXSino project, a test bench for testing Cs2Te photocathodes at 100 MHz laser repetition rate has been installed at INFN LASA. This high repetition operation mode is foreseen to be the base operation mode of BriXSino and qualification of the Cs2Te photocathodes is a key component. While we are not at full specification due to the limited High Voltage of the present DC gun, we discuss the status of the test bench and the initial results.

The MariX FEL is a compact GeV-class X-ray source exploiting a two-pass two-way acceleration in a Super-Conducting linac operated in continuous wave mode. A key component of this peculiar machine layout is the Bubble Arc Compressor (BAC), a 300 m long beamline consisting of 14 “Double Bend Achromat” cells and a bidirectional quadrupole focusing channel, which allows the beam to make a U-turn while it is being compressed to greatly increase its brightness and peak current. In this paper we present the performance of the BAC of MariX and the solutions we adopted to solve the main issues that the beam dynamics encounters in a line of this kind. We show the beam dynamics in the BAC matching line which is designed to operate on beams propagating in both directions, considering the anti-symmetric quadrupole focusing behavior. We study the Coherent Synchrotron Radiation (CSR) emission in the BAC showing a scheme that preserves the low emittance granting also a linear compression in presence of strong CSR effects. Lastly, we present a strategy to correct the residual dispersion-based beam tilt that is introduced by the CSR kick and would otherwise spoil the FEL emission. Further, the projected emittance is minimized cancelling the dispersive contributions.

The MariX project (Multi-disciplinary Advanced Infra-structure for Research with X-rays) is a free electron laser (FEL) light source proposed by the INFN-Milan. It will produce highly coherent X-rays, in the range 0.2-8 keV, with ultra-short pulses (10-50 fs) and a repetition rate up to 1MHz. At the same time, MariX will host a compact monochromatic X-ray source, called BriXS (Bright and compact X-ray Source), by using an inverse-Compton scattering scheme, with energies up to 180 keV and a repetition rate of 100 MHz (continuous-wave CW operation) that will generate fluxes up to 10 13 photons per second. In this paper, the Radio-Frequency (RF) and beam dynamics designs of the electron injector for the MariX-FEL project are presented. The choice of the main devices, such as the electron gun and the accelerating linear accelerators, as well as the main parameters for CW operation are discussed in detail.

This report presents the conceptual design of a new European research infrastructure EuPRAXIA. The concept has been established over the last four years in a unique collaboration of 41 laboratories within a Horizon 2020 design study funded by the European Union. EuPRAXIA is the first European project that develops a dedicated particle accelerator research infrastructure based on novel plasma acceleration concepts and laser technology. It focuses on the development of electron accelerators and underlying technologies, their user communities, and the exploitation of existing accelerator infrastructures in Europe. EuPRAXIA has involved, amongst others, the international laser community and industry to build links and bridges with accelerator science - through realising synergies, identifying disruptive ideas, innovating, and fostering knowledge exchange. The Eu-PRAXIA project aims at the construction of an innovative electron accelerator using laser- and electron-beam-driven plasma wakefield acceleration that offers a significant reduction in size and possible savings in cost over current state-of-the-art radiofrequency-based accelerators. The foreseen electron energy range of one to five gigaelectronvolts (GeV) and its performance goals will enable versatile applications in various domains, e.g. as a compact free-electron laser (FEL), compact sources for medical imaging and positron generation, table-top test beams for particle detectors, as well as deeply penetrating X-ray and gamma-ray sources for material testing. EuPRAXIA is designed to be the required stepping stone to possible future plasma-based facilities, such as linear colliders at the high-energy physics (HEP) energy frontier. Consistent with a high-confidence approach, the project includes measures to retire risk by establishing scaled technology demonstrators. This report includes preliminary models for project implementation, cost and schedule that would allow operation of the full Eu-PRAXIA facility within 8-10 years.

A seeded FEL driven by a linac based on super conducting cavities, generating 108–1010 coherent photons per shot at 2–5 keV with 0.2–1 MHz of repetition rate, can address the need of a source devoted to fine analysis of matter using the linear spectroscopy technique. The seeding scheme described hereafter is a multi-stage cascade upshifting the radiation frequency by a factor 20–40. The x-ray range can be achieved with a seed constituted by a coherent flash in the extreme ultraviolet range provided by an FEL oscillator operating at 12–14 nm. The whole chain of x-ray generation is described by means of start-to-end three-dimensional simulations.