Isochoric heating in heterogeneous solid targets with ultrashort laser pulses

Sentoku, Y.; Kemp, Andreas; Presura, R.; Bakeman, M.; Cowan, T. E.

doi:10.1063/1.2816439

Cited by 33 publications

(25 citation statements)

References 18 publications

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“…1. Experiments and simulations have shown that it is possible to isochorically heat targets at solidstate density to temperatures of a few hundred eV or even a few keV [60][61][62]. Since in this regime the heating of the target is mainly conducted by secondary parti- cles, i.e., hot electrons generated in the laser-target interaction, a more sophisticated model is necessary compared to the low-density case.…”

Section: W/cmmentioning

confidence: 99%

Tailoring Laser-Generated Plasmas for Efficient Nuclear Excitation by Electron Capture

Gunst

Keitel

et al. 2018

Phys. Rev. Lett.

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The optimal parameters for nuclear excitation by electron capture in plasma environments generated by the interaction of ultra-strong optical lasers with solid matter are investigated theoretically. As a case study we consider a 4.85 keV nuclear transition starting from the long-lived 93m Mo isomer that can lead to the release of the stored 2.4 MeV excitation energy. We find that due to the complex plasma dynamics, the nuclear excitation rate and the actual number of excited nuclei do not reach their maximum at the same laser parameters. The nuclear excitation achievable with a high-power optical laser is up to twelve and up to six orders of magnitude larger than the values predicted for direct resonant and secondary plasma-mediated excitation at the x-ray free electron laser, respectively. Our results show that the experimental observation of the nuclear excitation of 93m Mo and the subsequent release of stored energy should be possible at laser facilities available today.Novel coherent light sources open unprecedented possibilities for the field of laser-matter interactions [1]. The X-ray Free Electron Laser (XFEL) [2,3] for instance can drive low-energy electromagnetic transitions in nuclei. Ultra-strong optical laser systems with up to few petawatt power [4][5][6][7][8] are very efficient in generating plasma environments [9], which host complex interactions between photons, electrons, ions and the atomic nucleus. Nuclear excitation in laser-generated hot plasmas involving optical lasers [10][11][12][13][14][15][16][17][18][19][20][21][22][23][24][25][26], or cold high-density plasmas [27] at the XFEL [28,29] have been under investigation. Special attention has been attracted by nuclear transitions starting from long-lived excited states. Such states are also known as nuclear isomers and are particularly interesting due to their potential to store large amounts of energy over long periods of time [30][31][32][33][34][35][36][37]. A typical example is 93m Mo at 2.4 MeV, for which an additional excitation of only 4.85 keV could lead to the depletion of the isomer and release on demand of the stored energy.For both optical-and x-ray laser-generated plasmas, the process of nuclear excitation by electron capture (NEEC) [38,39] into the atomic shell has proven to have a significant contribution. As secondary process in the cold plasma environment generated by the interaction of the XFEL with solid-state targets, NEEC can exceed the direct nuclear photoexcitation by six orders of magnitude [28,29] for the 4.85 keV excitation starting from the 93m Mo isomeric state. In this Letter, we show that by tailoring optical-laser-generated plasmas to harness maximum nuclear excitation via NEEC, a further six orders of magnitude increase in the nuclear excitation and subsequent isomer depletion compared to the case of cold XFEL-generated plasmas can be reached. As an interesting point, we find that due to the complexity of the processes involved, the plasma and correspondingly laser parameters for reaching the maximal NEEC ra...

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Section: W/cmmentioning

confidence: 99%

Tailoring Laser-Generated Plasmas for Efficient Nuclear Excitation by Electron Capture

Gunst

Keitel

et al. 2018

Phys. Rev. Lett.

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“…This situation has previously been considered in terms of guiding and collimating the fast electrons, however the heating of the wire itself was not considered in much detail, nor was a more realistic fast electron divergence used in these previous studies. Some attention has been given to target heating for driving hydrodynamics by Sentoku and co-workers 13 , although this did not use resistive guiding as such and considered relatively thin targets. Hence the need to revisit this scenario in order to more properly assess the simple wire as a route to launching strong cylindrical shocks into dense material.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Rapid embedded wire heating via resistive guiding of laser-generated fast electrons as a hydrodynamic driver

2013

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Resistively guiding laser-generated fast electron beams in targets consisting of a resistive wire embedded in lower Z material should allow one to rapidly heat the wire to over 100eV over a substantial distance without strongly heating the surrounding material. On the multi-ps timescale this can drive hydrodynamic motion in the surrounding material. Thus ultra-intense laser solid interactions have the potential as a controlled driver of radiation hydrodynamics in solid density material. In this paper we assess the laser and target parameters needed to achieve such rapid and controlled heating of the embedded wire.

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“…Because the new target shape proposed here has not been fabricated yet, we used the two-dimensional (2D) particlein-cell (PIC) code PICLS (Sentoku et al, 2007) to run collisionless simulations and assess the electro-magnetic fields structures and proton beam characteristics in comparison with flat targets. We ran several intensities to span the range available to short pulse lasers.…”

Section: A New Shape For Particle Beam Generationmentioning

confidence: 99%

New micro-cones targets can efficiently produce higher energy and lower divergence particle beams

Galloudec

d’Humières

2010

Laser Part. Beams

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Small conical targets have been used in high intensity laser target interaction mostly in the context of fast ignition. We demonstrate that when cone targets are shaped appropriately and used with specific interaction conditions, they can produce particle beams of higher maximum energy and number in a lower angular divergence than flat targets. This is relevant to fast ignition, small compact particle beams, medical applications, focused ion and/or electron beam microscopes. This fact carries the potential to produce particle beams that are no longer limited by the characteristics of the laser. Note that for fast ignition, reducing the divergence of the beam lowers the energy requirement and enhances the energy deposition into the compressed fuel.

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Isochoric heating in heterogeneous solid targets with ultrashort laser pulses

Cited by 33 publications

References 18 publications

Tailoring Laser-Generated Plasmas for Efficient Nuclear Excitation by Electron Capture

Tailoring Laser-Generated Plasmas for Efficient Nuclear Excitation by Electron Capture

Rapid embedded wire heating via resistive guiding of laser-generated fast electrons as a hydrodynamic driver

New micro-cones targets can efficiently produce higher energy and lower divergence particle beams

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