Laser-Driven Particle Acceleration Towards Radiobiology and Medicine

Antonio Giulietti is a physicist operating at INO (NationalInstitute of Optics, Italy). He has been CNR Research Director and Head of the Unit"Adriano Gozzini" of INO. He founded ILIL (Intense Laser Irradiation  Laboratory) in the CNR Campus of Pisa whichhas been operating for more than 20 years with scientific output andinternational collaboration making ILIL a primary reference in the domain oflaser-plasmas. AG is author of more than 200 papers published on internationalrefereed journals, mainly in the field of laser and plasma physics, plasmainstabilities relevant to Inertial Fusion, radiation from plasmas, laser-drivenparticle acceleration and their biomedical potential. AG has organized andchaired a large number of international conferences on these topics. He ismember of the International Advisory Board of the International Conference onHigh Energy Density Science, annually held in Yokohama. His research group hasbeen supported by CNR, Italian Ministry of Education, Italian Ministry ofHealth, European Union, Extreme light Infrastructure (ELI), CEA (France), JSPS(Japan). AG has been very active in teaching and tutoring students and youngscientists. Young scientists trained in the AG' lab are today Professors orResearchers in prestigious Universities or Research Institutions, includingUniversities of Pisa, Siena, Milano, Bordeaux, Oxford, Belfast, EcolePolytechnique in Palaiseau, CEA-Saclay, BMI-Berlin, Rutherford AppletonLaboratory. In the last ten years 2006-2015 AG devoted most of his work atstudying possible medical uses of laser-driven particle accelerators.  Experiments performed in Pisa and atCEA-Saclay led to the discovery of a high efficiency acceleration regimeallowing the production of electron bunches whose charge and kinetic energy aresuitable for radiotherapy. Those electrons were also used to drive a gammasources and produce photo-activation, so opening a perspective of interest fornuclear medicine. In the meantime AG promoted R&D studies to achieve apractical usability of laser-driven accelerators in radiobiology and clinics, alsoin collaboration with CEA-Saclay and University of Osaka. In this framework herecently published (2015) a review paper on “Laser-Plasma Particle Sources forBiology and Medicine”.

• From the Contents: Part I Laser driven particle acceleration: From experiments to devices.- Ultra-intense lasers and particle acceleration: past, present and future.- Part II Biophysical studies with laser driven particle sources.- Part III Synchrotron, ion accelerator and microbeam.- Synchrotron source: dosimetry and pre-clinical trials.