Danilo Giulietti

X-ray emission from laser-produced plasmas

ConclusionsThe interaction of intense laser light with matter is now widely recognised as the most versatile and promising way of generating intense pulsed X-ray radiation. The scale of presently available laser systems required to set up a powerful X-ray source in a small-size laboratory, has made it possible to conceive and develop a wide range of multidisciplinary applications. Further, the fast development of powerful lasers towards higher efficiency and compact designs is giving a strong impulse to the implementation of LPP X-ray sources in advanced industrial applications. On the other hand, an intense activity is being devoted to this field by many laboratories world-wide within internationally coordinated programmes. These joint initiatives are continuously producing important scientific results. Hard X-ray emission and high-order harmonics from fs interactions are only examples of recent achievements of laser-matter interaction studies which represent a breakthrough in the field of X-ray generation.

Analyzing laser plasma interferograms with a continuous wavelet transform ridge extraction technique: the method.

Laser plasma interferograms are currently analyzed by extraction of the phase-shift map with fast Fourier transform (FFT) techniques [Appl. Opt. 18, 3101 (1985)]. This methodology works well when interferograms are only marginally affected by noise and reduction of fringe visibility, but it can fail to produce accurate phase-shift maps when low-quality images are dealt with. We present a novel procedure for a phase-shift map computation that makes extensive use of the ridge extraction in the continuous wavelet transform (CWT) framework. The CWT tool is flexible because of the wide adaptability of the analyzing basis, and it can be accurate because of the intrinsic noise reduction in the ridge extraction. A comparative analysis of the accuracy performances of the new tool and the FFT-based one shows that the CWT-based tool produces phase maps considerably less noisy and that it can better resolve local inhomogeneties.

Production of ultracollimated bunches of multi-MeV electrons by 35 fs laser pulses propagating in exploding-foil plasmas

Very collimated bunches of high energy electrons have been produced by focusing super-intense femtosecond laser pulses in submillimeter under-dense plasmas. The density of the plasma, preformed with the laser exploding-foil technique, was mapped using Nomarski interferometry. The electron beam was fully characterized: up to 10^9 electrons per shot were accelerated, most of which in a beam of aperture below 10^−3 sterad, with energies up to 40 MeV. These measurements, which are well modeled by three-dimensional numerical simulations, validate a reliable method to generate ultrashort and ultracollimated electron bunches.

Linear and Nonlinear Thomson Scattering for Advanced X-ray Sources in PLASMONX

Thomson scattering of laser pulses onto ultrarelativistic e-bunches is becoming an advanced source of tunable, quasi-monochromatic, and ultrashort X/gamma radiation. Sources aimed at reaching a high flux of scattered photons need to be driven by high-brightness e-beams, whereas extremely short (femtosecond scale or less) sources need to make femtosecond-long e-beams that collide with the laser pulses. In this paper, we explore the performance of the PLASMONX TS source in several operating regimes, including preliminary results on a source based on e-bunches produced by laser wakefield acceleration and controlled injection via density down ramp.

Prepulse effect on intense femtosecond laser pulse propagation in gas

The propagation of an ultrashort laser pulse can be affected by the light reaching the medium before the pulse. This can cause a serious drawback to possible applications. The propagation in He of an intense 60-fs pulse delivered by a Ti:sapphire laser in the chirped pulse amplification (CPA) mode has been investigated in conditions of interest for laser-plasma acceleration of electrons. The effects of both nanosecond amplified spontaneous emission and picosecond pedestals have been clearly identified. There is evidence that such effects are basically of refractive nature and that they are not detrimental for the propagation of a CPA pulse focused to moderately relativistic intensity. The observations are fully consistent with numerical simulations and can contribute to the search of a stable regime for laser acceleration.

SHEEBA: A spatial high energy electron beam analyzer

Electron bunches with large energy and angle spread are not easy to be analyzed with conventional spectrometers. In this article, a device for the detection of high energy electrons is presented. This detector, based on the traces left by electrons on a stack of dosimetric films, together with an original numerical algorithm for traces deconvolution, is able to characterize both angularly and spectrally (up to some mega-electron-volts) a broad-spectrum electron bunch. A numerical test was successfully performed with a virtual electron beam, which was in turn reconstructed using a Montecarlo code (based on the CERN library GEANT4). Due to its simplicity and small size, the spatial high energy electron beam analyzer (SHEEBA) detector is particularly suitable to be used in laser plasma acceleration experiments.

The laser-matter interaction meets the high energy physics: Laser-plasma accelerators and bright X/gamma-ray sources

Laser matter interaction in the regime of super-intense and ultra-short laser pulses is discovering common interests and goals for plasma and elementary particles physics. Among them, the electron laser wakefield acceleration and the X/γ tunable sources, based on the Thomson scattering (TS) of optical photons on accelerated electrons, represent the most challenging applications. The activity of the Intense Laser Irradiation Laboratory in this field will be presented.

Spectral and angular characterization of laser-produced proton beams from dosimetric measurements

Central Laser Facility Annual Report 2004/2005 2

Novel x-ray multispectral imaging of ultraintense laser plasmas by a single-photon charge coupled device based pinhole camera

Spectrally resolved two-dimensional imaging of ultrashort laser-produced plasmas is described, obtained by means of an advanced technique. The technique has been tested with microplasmas produced by ultrashort relativistic laser pulses. The technique is based on the use of a pinhole camera equipped with a charge coupled device detector operating in the single-photon regime. The spectral resolution is about 150 eV in the 4-10 keV range, and images in any selected photon energy range have a spatial resolution of 5 microm. The potential of the technique to study fast electron propagation in ultraintense laser interaction with multilayer targets is discussed and some preliminary results are shown.

Line spectroscopy with spatial resolution of laser-plasma X-ray emission

High dynamic range, space-resolved X-ray spectra of an aluminum laser‐plasma in the 5.5‐8 A range were obtained using a TlAP crystal and a cooled CCD camera as a detector. This technique was used to investigate the emission region in the longitudinal direction over a distance of approximately 350 mm from the solid target surface. These data show that the electron density profile varies by two orders of magnitude with the temperature ranging from about 180 eV in the overdense region to about 650 eV in the underdense region. Accordingly, different equilibria take place across the explored region which can be identified with this experimental technique. Detailed studies on highly ionized atomic species in different plasma conditions can therefore be performed simultaneously under controlled conditions.