EuPRAXIA Doctoral Network to research on laser-driven proton beam therapy
The EuPRAXIA Doctoral Network (EuPRAXIA-DN) is a new Horizon Europe Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions Doctoral Network (MSCA-DN), offering 12 high level fellowships between universities, research centres and industry to will carry out an interdisciplinary and cross-sector plasma accelerator research and training program for the new EuPRAXIA research infrastructure.
Included in the European Strategy Forum on Research Infrastructures (ESFRI) Roadmap in 2021, EuPRAXIA will develop an innovative electron accelerator using laser- and electron-beam-driven plasma wakefield acceleration.
EuPRAXIA-DN will focus on the formation of early stage researchers by their completion of a dedicated research project and an intense programme of training and secondments across a number of European institutions. One of the projects on offer, led by the University of Liverpool, will be devoted to laser-driven proton beam therapy.
EuPRAXIA provides an exciting platform to explore new, highly flexible radiation sources which can allow proton and ion beams to be captured at energies significantly above the proton- and ion-capture energies that pertain in conventional facilities, thereby evading the current space-charge limit on the instantaneous dose rate that can be delivered.
This project will investigate Laser-driven Proton Beam Therapy as a potential application with important health, economic and social impact. It will study concepts for using a laser to drive the creation of a large flux of protons or light ions which are captured and formed into a beam by strong-focusing plasma lenses.
A laser-driven source allows protons and ions to be captured at energies significantly above those that pertain in conventional facilities, thus evading the current space-charge limit on the instantaneous dose rate that can be delivered.
The project will also explore the use of gas jet technology for characterizing charged particle beams. The University of Liverpool’s QUASAR Group has pushed this technology for more than a decade and already optimized it for use with low energy electrons and antiprotons, as well as for the high luminosity upgrade of the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) at CERN.
In EuPRAXIA-DN this will be adapted for the challenges found in laser-driven ion beam cancer therapy and connected with the R&D carried out in other initiatives such as the LhARA project. This requires online, shot-by-shot measurement of beam position, profile and intensity which shall all be achieved by a single monitor.
The Fellow will have access to the wide-ranging EuPRAXIA-DN training program which will include several international schools and workshops on plasma accelerator science and technology, as well as complementary skills. They will be registered for their PhD at the University of Liverpool and have access to the postgraduate lecture program at the Cockcroft Institute.
More information at: https://www.eupraxia-dn.org/