Speaker
Description
The commissioning of the 1 PW experimental area has been successfully performed at ELI-NP with a TNSA experiment on proton acceleration and a LWFA experiment on electron acceleration. A brief introduction to the typical laser-driven acceleration mechanisms will be done, followed by the description of the typical laser parameters, setups, diagnostic and simulation tools and results obtained. In the TNSA experiment, the laser beam was focused down to a spot size of ~3.5 µm FWHM, reaching a peak intensity of the order of I0 > 1021 Wcm-2. The central wavelength of the laser beam is 810 nm, the laser pulse had a duration of less than 25 fs, and the maximum energy delivered on target was 24 J. The laser interacted with solid targets of various thicknesses, ranging from tens of nm to micrometers, and materials, such as plastic, metal, and DLC. Also, a setup configuration with a plasma mirror was employed to improve the temporal contrast of the laser. The wide target and laser parametric scan were undertaken to grab a large amount of data in different conditions for a better understanding of the performance of the laser system. A wide range of laser and plasma diagnostics were deployed to characterize the laser beam and the by-products of the interaction on a shot-to-shot base. For the LWFA experiment, the laser beam was focused with a 5 m long focusing off-axis parabolic mirror to a spot size of ~25 um FWHM, reaching a peak intensity, I0, in the range of 1019 – 1020 Wcm-2. Two different gas target systems, jet nozzle and gas cell, and with different types of gas admixture were used to investigate the electron acceleration. An extensive set of diagnostics were also used to measure the most relevant parameters of the interaction, e.g., the accelerated electron spectra, plasma density, and X-ray emission. The potential applications and future work will be also presented.
