Experiments were performed to study electron acceleration by intense sub-picosecond laser pulses propagating in sub-mm long plasmas of near critical electron density (NCD). Low density foam layers of 300-500 μm thickness were used as targets. In foams, the NCD-plasma was produced by a mechanism of super-sonic ionization when a well-defined separate ns-pulse was sent onto the foamtarget forerunning the relativistic main pulse. The application of sub-mm thick low density foam layers provided a substantial increase of the electron acceleration path in a NCD-plasma compared to the case of freely expanding plasmas created in the interaction of the ns-laser pulse with solid foils. The performed experiments on the electron heating by a 100 J, 750 fs short laser pulse of 2-5×10 19 W cm −2 intensity demonstrated that the effective temperature of supra-thermal electrons increased from 1.5-2 MeV in the case of the relativistic laser interaction with a metallic foil at high laser contrast up to 13 MeV for the laser shots onto the pre-ionized foam. The observed tendency towards a strong increase of the mean electron energy and the number of ultra-relativistic laseraccelerated electrons is reinforced by the results of gamma-yield measurements that showed a 1000fold increase of the measured doses. The experiment was supported by 3D-PIC and FLUKA simulations, which considered the laser parameters and the geometry of the experimental set-up. Both, measurements and simulations showed a high directionality of the acceleration process, since the strongest increase in the electron energy, charge and corresponding gamma-yield was observed close to the direction of the laser pulse propagation. The charge of super-ponderomotive electrons with energy above 30 MeV reached a very high value of 78 nC.
An advanced type of hydrodynamic stable plasma targets with homogeneous distribution of plasma parameters has been proposed for application in experiments on heavy ion stopping in plasmas and relativistic laser based particle acceleration. Plasma was created via x-ray heating of polymer aerogels with a mean density 10 3 times lower than that of solid matter. Hydrodynamic and radiation properties of low-density polymer aerogels heated by x-rays, which were generated due to laser interaction with a gold hohlraum, have been investigated experimentally and numerically. In experiments carried out at the PALS laser facility in Prague, the parameters of the hohlraum based soft x-ray source and the fraction of x-ray energy absorbed by foam layers have been measured. The results of these experiments and numerical simulations show that the x-ray heat process occurs via propagation of supersonic radiation driven heat waves. The measured heat wave velocity of 10 7 cm s −1 allows one to estimate the plasma temperature reached as 25 eV. The hydrodynamic stability of x-ray heated plasma layers has been demonstrated by means of an optical streak camera viewing the plasma expansion process. Simulations of the foam heating process denote rather homogeneous distribution of the plasma temperature and density in the x-ray heated plasma layer and sharp plasma boundaries. The investigated features of such plasma targets are a great advantage for experiments with heavy ion and relativistic laser beams.
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