Plasma-based technology promises a revolution in the field of particle accelerators by pushing beams to gigaelectronvolt energies within centimeter distances and enabling the realization of ultra-compact facilities for user applications like Free-Electron Lasers (FEL). The progress towards a plasma based FEL user facility is here reported, with particular focus on the recent results about the first experimental evidence of FEL lasing by a compact (3 cm) particle beam-driven plasma accelerator at the SPARC_LAB test facility.
12/11/2021