Fast ion acceleration in ultraintense laser interactions with an overdense plasma

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...

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

Electron Acceleration Using an Ultrashort Ultraintense Laser Pulse

Ion acceleration by superintense laser-plasma interaction

Ion acceleration driven by superintense laser pulses is attracting an impressive and steadily increasing effort. Motivations can be found in the applicative potential and in the perspective to investigate novel regimesasavailable laser intensitieswill be increasing.Experimentshavedemonstrated, over awide range of laser and target parameters, the generation of multi-MeV proton and ion beams with...

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...