Conservation laws and conversion efficiency in ultraintense laser-overdense plasma interactions

Neutron production by fast protons from ultraintense laser-plasma interactions

Tens of MeV proton beams have been generated by interactions of the VULCAN petawatt laser with foil targets and used to induce nuclear reactions in zinc and boron samples. The numbers of C, Ga, Ga, Ga, Cu, Zn, Zn, and Zn nuclei have been measured and used to determine the proton energy spectrum. It is known that sp ,nd reactions provide an important method for producing neutron sources and in t...

Relativistic plasma shutter for ultraintense laser pulses.

A relativistic plasma shutter technique is proposed and tested to remove the sub-100 ps pedestal of a high-intensity laser pulse. The shutter is an ultrathin foil placed before the target of interest. As the leading edge of the laser ionizes the shutter material it will expand into a relativistically underdense plasma allowing for the peak pulse to propagate through while rejecting the low inte...

On the Generation of Strong Magnetic Fields in the Interaction of Ultraintense Short Laser Pulse with an Overdense Plasma Target

Hot electrons transverse refluxing in ultraintense laser-solid interactions.

We have analyzed the coupling of ultraintense lasers (at ∼2×10{19}  W/cm{2}) with solid foils of limited transverse extent (∼10  s of μm) by monitoring the electrons and ions emitted from the target. We observe that reducing the target surface area allows electrons at the target surface to be reflected from the target edges during or shortly after the laser pulse. This transverse refluxing can ...

Modulation of harmonic emission spectra in relativistic laser interactions with overdense plasma