Medical research and multidisciplinary applications with laser-accelerated beams: The ELIMED netwotk at ELI-Beamlines

Laser accelerated proton beams represent nowadays an attractive alternative to the conventional ones and they have been proposed in different research fields. In particular, the interest has been focused in the possibility of replacing conventional accelerating machines with laser-based accelerators in order to develop a new concept of hadrontherapy facilities, which could result more compact and less expensive. With this background the ELIMED (ELIMED: ELI-Beamlines MEDical applications) research project has been launched by LNS-INFN researchers (Laboratori Nazionali del Sud-Istituto Nazionale di Fisica Nucleare, Catania, IT) and ASCR-FZU researchers (Academy of Sciences of the Czech Republic-Fyzikální ústar, Prague, Cz), within the pan-European ELI-Beamlines facility framework. Its main purposes are the demonstration of future applications in hadrontherapy of optically accelerated protons and the realization of a laser-accelerated ion transport beamline for multidisciplinary applications. Several challenges, starting from laser-target interaction and beam transport development, up to dosimetric and radiobiological issues, need to be overcome in order to reach the final goals. The design and the realization of a preliminary beam handling and dosimetric system and of an advanced spectrometer for high energy (multi-MeV) laser-accelerated ion beams will be shortly presented in this work.