High energy electrons, nuclear phenomena and heating in petawatt laser-solid experiments

Abstract

The Petawatt laser at LLNL has opened a new regime of laser-matter interactions in which the quiver motion of plasma electrons is fully relativistic with energies extending well above the threshold for nuclear processes. In addition to -few MeV ponderomotive electrons produced in ultra-intense laser-solid interactions, we have found a high energy component of electrons extending to -100 MeV apparently from relativistic self-focusing and plasma acceleration in the underdense pre-formed plasma. The generation of hard bremsstrahlung, photo-nuclear reactions, and preliminary evidence for positron-electron pair production will be discussed.

Fast Charged Particles and Super-Strong Magnetic Fields Generated by Intense Laser Target Interaction

“…Threshold smearing evidences for stochastic character of the process. The good agreement between theory and experiment (Matafonov & Belyaev, 2001;Malka & Miquel, 1996;Borodin et al, 2000;Nickles et al, 1999;Ledingham & Norreys, 1999;Cowan et al, 1999;He et al, 2004;Mangles et al, 2005) suggests the realizability of the proposed high-energy electron formation mechanism in laser plasmas. In our article (Belyaev, Kostenko et al, 2003) we also have investigated cyclotron mechanism of electron acceleration.…”

Electroweak Processes in Laser-Boosted Lepton Collisions

“…5, the field-free cross section only depends on the total collision energy and, for the Higgs boson mass M H = 125 GeV as found at CERN [CMS12b;ATL12b], is maximal for E cm ≈ 244.5 GeV. Without a laser field, this requires initial muon energies of p 0 ≈ 122 GeV.…”

“…(6.24). This rate has the usual meaning and can be accessed experimentally in the same way as in field-free experiments [ATL12b;CMS12b]. In our case where the free lepton momenta are opposite and equal, the particle flux becomes…”

“…Among many important achievements of the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) at CERN, the recent detection of the Higgs boson is possibly its most groundbreaking feat [ATL12b;CMS12b]. This particle has been a missing puzzle piece for the Standard Model of elementary particles for the past half century and has been sought for experimentally for the past few decades.…”

“…From then on, the possible mass range for the Higgs boson has been continuously narrowed down, until it was established that the Higgs mass must be either between 115 and 127 GeV/c 2 or larger than 600 GeV/c 2 [CMS12a; ATL12a]. In mid 2012, the detection of a new particle with a mass of approximately 125 GeV/c 2 has been confirmed by both the ATLAS and the CMS collaborations [ATL12b;CMS12b].…”