Study of Electron-Beam Propagation through Preionized Dense Foam Plasmas

Filamentation Instability of Counterstreaming Laser-Driven Plasmas

“…The classical form of the Weibel instability is driven by temperature anisotropy [4], but counterstreaming ion beams, as occurs in the present context, provides an equivalent drive mechanism [6]. A related current filamentation instability of relativistic electron beams [12] has also previously been observed in experiments driven by ultraintense lasers [13].…”

“…The classical form of the Weibel instability is driven by temperature anisotropy [4], but counterstreaming ion beams, as occurs in the present context, provides an equivalent drive mechanism [6]. A related current filamentation instability of relativistic electron beams [12] has also previously been observed in experiments driven by ultraintense lasers [13].We report experimental identification an ion-driven Weibel-type instability generated in the interaction of two counterstreaming laser-produced plasma plumes. A pair of opposing CH targets was irradiated by kJ-class laser pulses on the OMEGA EP laser laser system, driving a pair of ablative flows toward the collision region at the midplane between the two foils.…”

Three-Dimensional Magnetic Structures Generated by the Development of the Filamentation (Weibel) Instability in the Relativistic Regime

“…Energetic electron beams resulting from laser plasma interaction with dense plasmas have been recently claimed to be observed experimentally [21] and some evidence of Weibel-like dynamics when the beam density approaches the background density is discussed. In particular, in Refs.…”

“…On the contrary, in the symmetric case where the return beam moves at nearly the same velocity as the injected beam, collisions are not expected to play a major role. The possibility of generating electron beams by an ultra intense laser pulse impinging on a critical surface plasma layer has been shown in two dimensions (2D) [15][16][17][18] as well as in 3D [19][20][21] using kinetic particle in cell numerical simulations. Current filamented structures have been found with typical transverse width of the order of d e and elongated in the laser pulse direction starting from the critical surface layer (i.e., much longer than d e ), together with the corresponding magnetic fields.…”

Novel Single-Shot Diagnostics for Electrons from Laser-Plasma Interaction at SPARC_LAB

“…In particular, a large number of electrons are released from the opposite surface with respect to the laser-target interaction. Those electrons, called fast electrons, are responsible for exit surface ionization and ion/proton acceleration and they have been studied in the past with different approaches [14][15][16][17][18][19]. With this technique, we succeed with measuring for the first time the temporal profile of the electric field carried by fast electrons generated during the interaction with an unprecedented resolution below 100 fs [20,21].…”