A new beam line on CLARA will provide access to ultrashort, low emittance electron bunches combined with a high power 120 TW laser. Titled Full Energy Beam Exploitation (FEBE), it has been designed to maximise the user research potential of CLARA in a variety of fields, including novel acceleration and new modalities of radiotherapy.
Based in the Electron Hall at STFC Daresbury Laboratory, FEBE is an extension to Phase 2 of the CLARA project. It has been designed such that users can access their experiments without needing to switch the CLARA accelerator off, maximising the number of experiments performed each year.
Above the hutch a laser room has been prepared to situate a new 120 TW Ti:Sapphire laser system from supplier Amplitude. Intense pulses of light, synchronization to femtosecond precision, are directed into the hutch to form a common focus with the electron beam.
This capability is rare for an electron beam test facility, with only a few other examples worldwide, and fewer still providing open access to the community.
A new paper, published in Physical Review Accelerator and Beams as an 'Editors' Suggestion', details the design of the beam line. It outlines many of the unique features and technologies which have been developed to enhance user exploitation of CLARA. Titled 'Specification and design for full energy beam exploitation of the compact linear accelerator for research and applications', the article is available to read and download at https://journals.aps.org/prab/abstract/10.1103/PhysRevAccelBeams.27.041602. (Opens in new tab)
FEBE was designed by STFC's Accelerator Science and Technology Centre and STFC's Technology Department. Construction of the beam line is underway, with first user experiments scheduled to take place early 2025. A call for first experiments is expected to be issued to the community autumn 2024.
For more information on CLARA including future user exploitation, please contact deepa.angal-kalinin@stfc.ac.uk.
