P. Koester, K. Akli, A. Antonicci, D. Batani, S. Baton, R.G. Evans, E. Foerster, A. Giulietti, D. Giulietti, L.A. Gizzi, J.S. Green, T. Kaempfer, M. Koenig, L. Labate, K.L. Lancaster, T. Levato, A. Luebcke, A. Morace, P. Norreys, F. Perez, I. Uschmann, J. Waugh, N. Woolsey, F. Zamponi

Experimental inve stigation of fast electron transport through Kalpha imaging and spectroscopy in relativistic laser - solid interactions

35th EPS Conference on Plasma Physics

The s t u dy of the basic p hysical p roces ses u n derlying the generation of fas t
elect rons d u ring the interaction of high - intensi ty shor t laser p ulses with
solid ma terials an d the t rans por t of these fas t elect rons through the target
ma t erial are of great impor tance for the fas t ignition concept for iner tial
confinement fusion an d for the development of ul t ra - s hor t X-ray sources.
We repor t on the experiment al inves tigation of fas t elect ron t rans por t
p henomena by me ans of the s patial an d s pect ral characterization of the Xray
emis sion from layered target s using bent crys tal s pect rome ter s an d a
new diagnos tic technique ba sed on a pinhole - camera equip ped with a CCD
detector working in single - p h oto n regime for mul ti - s pect ral X-ray
imaging[1]. In pa r ticular, differences of fas t elect ron t rans por t features
depen ding on the atomic n umber an d / o r the resis tivity of the ta rget ma terial
have been s tu died.
The experiment s were car ried out a t relativistic laser intensi ties, both in the
longer (~ps) p ulse interaction regime relevant for fas t ignition s tu dies[2] and
in the shor t - p ul se (~100 fs) interaction con ditions related to basic p hysics
s t u dies as well as to the development of ul t rashor t Kalpha X-ray sources.
[1] L. Labate et al., Rev. Sci. Ins t rum. 78, 103506 (2007).
[2] M.H. Key, Phys. Plasma s 1 4 , 055502 (2007).