The laser-driven ion acceleration beamline on the ALLS 200 TW for testing nanowire targets

We present recent advances of the laser-driven proton acceleration beamline on the Advanced Laser Light Source (ALLS) 200 TW located at INRS-EMT in Varennes near Montreal, Canada. We will present the different new tools and diagnostics that have been implemented on the chamber for target alignment and proton detection. These tools include a Target Positioning System (TPI) that uses interferometry to enable sub-micron target positioning. Combined with a focal spot imaging system running at full laser power, the TPI enables exceptional laser-target alignment optimization, thus providing very low shot-to-shot fluctuations. We will also present the calibration of two types of proton detectors on the Tandem 2×6 MV linear accelerator from Université de Montréal. The calibration involves measuring the relevant proton number and energy dependences. We compare this on the new EBT-XD radiochromic films, a Time-of-Flight (TOF) system and an MCP-based Thomson parabola (MCP-TP). We will put this setup in the context of foreseen experiments on optimizing laser-driven proton production using nanowire targets, where preliminary PIC simulations and target production has been performed.