P. Pirzadeh

High energy heavy ion jets emerging from laser plasma generated by long pulse laser beams from the NHELIX laser system at GSI

High energy heavy ions were generated in laser produced plasma at moderate laser energy, with a large focal spot size of 0.5 mm diameter. The laser beam was provided by the 10 GW GSI-NHELIX laser systems, and the ions were observed spectroscopically in status nascendi with high spatial and spectral resolution. Due to the focal geometry, plasma jet was formed, containing high energy heavy ions. The velocity distribution was measured via an observation of Doppler shifted characteristic transition lines. The observed energy of up to 3 MeV of F-ions deviates by an order of magnitude from the well-known Gitomer ~Gitomer et al., 1986! scaling, and agrees with the higher energies of relativistic self focusing.

The generation of fast particles in plasmas created by laser pulses with different wavelengths

By means of spatially resolved high-resolution X-ray spectroscopy, we have investigated the generation of fast ions at various laser installations with different flux densities and laser wavelengths. It is demonstrated that the fast ion generation in laser-produced plasma can be achieved for a very low level of the averaged laser intensity on the target. The time-of-flight mass spectrometry ion diagnostics and X-ray spectrographs give very close results for the energy distribution of the thermal ion component. For higher energies, however, we found significant differences: the spatially resolved high-resolution spectrographs expose the presence of suprathermal ions, while the time-of-flight method does not. Suprathermal ion energies Eion plotted as a function of the qλ2 parameter show a large scatter far above the experimental errors. The cause of these large scatters is attributed to a strong nonuniformity of the laser intensity distribution in the focal spot. The analysis by means of hydrodynamics and spectral simulations show that the X-ray emission spectrum is a complex convolution from different parts of the plasma with strongly different electron density and temperature. It is shown that the highly resolved Li-like satellite spectrum near Heαcontains significant distortions even for very low hot electron fractions. Non-Maxwellian spectroscopy allows determination of both the hot electron fraction and the bulk electron temperature.

Observation of MeV ions in long-pulse, large-scale laser-produced plasmas

A new approach for investigation of the generation of fast ions and hot electrons inside the same plasma volume in laser-produced plasmas is proposed. It is based on the spectroscopic observation of line radiation from singly and doubly excited levels with simultaneous high spectral and spatial resolution. The experimental results demonstrate the observation of fast ions from highly charged target material inside the plasma volume and suggest that the generally accepted scaling relations are seriously invalid under certain conditions. Even at rather modest intensities ions with energies of several MeV are observed.

X-ray spectroscopy of laser-heated CF2-foils

At the Z6 experimental area of the Gsesellshaft fur Schwerionenforschung in Darmstadt experiments with the nhelix laser facility were carried out to determine the plasma parameter sch as temperature, degree of ionization and expansion dynamics for laser heated targets, which are used for the ion beam-plasma-interaction experimental series. Spatially resolved x-ray spectroscopy with spherically bent mica crystals showed well collimated jets of He- and H-like ions emerging out of the front and rear surface of the target with energies in the MeV range.