The acoustic pulse emitted from the Bragg peak of a laser-accelerated proton bunch focused into water has recently enabled the reconstruction of the bunch energy distribution. By adding three ultrasonic transducers and implementing a fast data analysis of the filtered raw signals, I-BEAT 3D now provides the mean bunch energy and absolute lateral bunch position in real-time and for individual bunches. Relative changes in energy spread and lateral bunch size can also be monitored. Our experiments at DRACO with proton bunch energies between 10 and 30 MeV reveal sub-MeV and sub-mm resolution. In addition to this three-dimensional bunch information, the signal strength correlates also with the absolute bunch particle number.
Characterizing exact energy density distributions for laser-accelerated ion bunches in a medium is challenging due to very high beam intensities and the electro-magnetic pulse (EMP) emitted in the laser-plasma interaction. Ion-bunch energy acoustic tracing (I-BEAT) allows for reconstructing the spatial energy density from the ionoacoustic wave generated upon impact in water. We have extended this approach to tracing ionoacoustic modulations of broad energy distributions (TIMBRE) by introducing thin foils in the water reservoir to shape the acoustic waves at distinct points along the depthdose curve. Here, we present first simulation studies of this new detector and reconstruction approach which provides on-line read-out of the deposited energy with depth within centimeter range behind the ion source of state-of-the-art laser-plasma based accelerators.
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