Faisceau de protons générés par l'interaction d'un laser ultra court avec une cible solide.

摘要

Laser induced proton generation knew an exponential development these last few years, mainly du to powerfull laser improvments associated to a clear decrease of dimension and cost of such facilities. Applications of such proton beam take place in different topics, either in medical purposes (protontherapy, isotope generation for PET...) than civilian topics (inertiel fusion, fast ignitor...). Interaction of a 1019 W=cm2 short pulse laser beam with a solid target permit to accelerate or generate different kind of particles, such as electrons, protons, ions or x rays. The main interest of my thesis is to characterize proton beam generated by the laser (in term of divergence, spectrum, energy, reproducibility,...) with regards to laser parameters, in order to optimize the laser energy 3 conversion into energetic protons, for, in longer term purpose, an eventually use in protontherapy cancer treatments. This topics drove us, as a first step, to develop diagnostic well adapted to real time proton detection. Moreover, as a second step, to open a discussion on laser parameters of interest involved in proton beam generation. Maximum energy reached with short pulse interaction is up to 10 MeV (LOA), using longer pulses (and more laser energy), record is up to 58 MeV (LNL). These results are very promising for future, but still far from the range 70 - 200 MeV needed for protontherapy cancer treatment purposes.