Proton Beam Focusing and Heating in Petawatt Laser-Solid Interactions

Book excerpt: It has recently been demonstrated that femtosecond-laser generated proton beams may be focused. These protons, following expansion of the Debye sheath, emit off the inner concave surface of hemispherical shell targets irradiated at their outer convex pole. The sheath normal expansion produces a rapidly converging proton beam. Such focused proton beams provide a new and powerful means to achieve isochoric heating to high temperatures. They are potentially important for measuring the equation of state of materials at high energy density and may provide an alternative route to fast ignition. We present the first results of proton focusing and heating experiments performed at the Petawatt power level at the Gekko XII Laser Facility at ILE Osaka Japan. Solid density Aluminum slabs are placed in the proton focal region at various lengths. The degree of proton focusing is measured via XUV imaging of Planckian emission of the heated zone. Simultaneous with the XUV measurement a streaked optical imaging technique, HISAK, gave temporal optical emission images of the focal region. Results indicate excellent coupling between the laser-proton conversion and subsequent heating.