FAST PARTICLE GENERATION IN ULTRA-INTENSE INTERACTION EXPERIMENTS AND APPLICATIONS

摘要

A series of experiments carried out at the Rutherford Appleton Laboratory has studied the generation of multi-MeV protons from solid targets irradiated with picosecond laser pulses at intensities exceeding 10~(19) W/cm~2. The proton source has been characterized in view of its possible application as a particle probe for point projection imaging of dense plasmas. The first applications of this novel diagnostic, proton imaging, are discussed in this paper. The technique appears very promising for the diagnosis of field distributions, and has been applied to the detection of fields due to laser imprinting in laser-produced plasmas. Electric fields at the surface of solid targets following ultraintense irradiation have also been observed.