The Defense Threat Reduction Agency, (DTRA) has awarded Professor Igor Jovanovic $760,000 over five years for research and development of a compact laser-driven particle acceleration method for potential applications in long-range sensing of shielded fissile materials such as uranium-233, uranium-235, and plutonium-238.
The abstract is below.

ll-Optical Quasi-Phase Matching for Laser Electron Acceleration

Sensing of shielded fissile materials at long range in field applications is critically dependent on the development of compact, low-weight, and low-power particle accelerators. Laser-based acceleration [1,2] has a potential to meet those requirements. Important advances in laser wakefield acceleration have been demonstrated recently, but the laser systems needed for effective laser wakefield acceleration are still relatively complex, large, and expensive. Direct laser acceleration of electrons offers a compelling alternative to laser wakefield acceleration when low-energy ultrafast lasers are used. [3,4] Efficient electron guiding in plasma channels over many Rayleigh lengths is needed for direct laser acceleration and has been realized in the past, but the dephasing between the electrons and the laser pulse limits the effective interaction length. Quasi-phase matching can be used to overcome this limitation. The objective of this work is to investigate a novel, all-optical method to facilitate efficient quasi-phase matching for direct acceleration of electrons in plasma waveguides. The proposed unique approach is based on the coupling of adaptive channel shaping and acceleration pulse shaping to achieve consistent modulations with a characteristic period of an integer multiple of the coherence length. All- optical control of quasi-phase matching offers the prospect of unprecedented flexibility, compactness, and low cost for particle accelerators applicable to active interrogation of fissile materials.