Measuring the strong electrostatic and magnetic fields with proton radiography for ultra-high intensity laser channeling on fast ignition

Y Uematsu; S Ivancic; T Iwawaki; H Habara; A L Lei; W Theobald; K A Tanaka

doi:10.1063/1.4890575

Measuring the strong electrostatic and magnetic fields with proton radiography for ultra-high intensity laser channeling on fast ignition

Rev Sci Instrum. 2014 Nov;85(11):11E612. doi: 10.1063/1.4890575.

Authors

Y Uematsu¹, S Ivancic², T Iwawaki¹, H Habara¹, A L Lei³, W Theobald², K A Tanaka¹

Affiliations

¹ Graduate School of Engineering, Osaka University, Osaka 565-0871, Japan.
² Laboratory for Laser Energetics, 250 East River Road, Rochester, New York 14623-1299, USA.
³ Shanghai Institute of Laser Plasma, 201800 Shanghai, China.

PMID: 25430358
DOI: 10.1063/1.4890575

Abstract

In order to investigate the intense laser propagation and channel formation in dense plasma, we conducted an experiment with proton deflectometry on the OMEGA EP Laser facility. The proton image was analyzed by tracing the trajectory of mono-energetic protons, which provides understanding the electric and magnetic fields that were generated around the channel. The estimated field strengths (E ∼ 10(11) V/m and B ∼ 10(8) G) agree with the predictions from 2D-Particle-in-cell (PIC) simulations, indicating the feasibility of the proton deflectometry technique for over-critical density plasma.