Dr Laura Corner BSc, ARCS, PhD

I am currently involved in developing new laser sources for a number of applications in accelerator science. These include:

i) The coherent combination of multiple photonic crystal fibre lasers to create high average and peak power lasers to drive laser plasma wakefield acceleration.
ii) Development of techniques for the generation of low energy, short pulse trains of laser pulses for the resonant enhancement of plasma wakefields.
iii) Development of near and mid-infrared laser sources for seeding and modulation of free electron lasers.

I work in collaboration with Prof. Simon Hooker's group at the John Adams Institute, University of Oxford, on research in laser driven plasma wakefield acceleration. This research covers both novel techniques for guiding laser pulses in plasmas over long (> 20mm) distances, essential for high energy gain plasma accelerators, and also the generation and use of resonant pulse trains to drive large amplitude plasma wakefields. The benefit of using pulse trains rather than single high energy pulses is to enable the adoption of more efficient, higher repetition rate but lower energy laser systems, such as fibres or thin disc lasers, instead of the current laser technology and thus facilitate the operation of laser plasma accelerators at multi-kHz repetition rates.STFC news item on our research on plasma waveguides