Related papers: Enhanced Proton Acceleration by an Ultrashort Lase…
Understanding the target dynamics during its interaction with a relativistic ultrashort laser pulse is a challenging fundamental multi-physics problem involving at least atomic and solid-state physics, plasma physics, and laser physics.…
The rapid progress that plasma wakefield accelerators are experiencing is now posing the question as to whether they could be included in the design of the next generation of high-energy electron-positron colliders. However, the typical…
Contemporary ultraintense, short-pulse laser systems provide extremely compact setups for the production of high-flux neutron beams, such as those required for nondestructive probing of dense matter, research on neutron-induced damage in…
Ion acceleration from gaseous targets driven by relativistic-intensity lasers was demonstrated as early as the late 90s, yet most of the experiments conducted to date have involved picosecond-duration, Nd:glass lasers operating at low…
Relativistic temperature electrons higher than 0.5 MeV are generated typically with laser intensities of about 10$^{18}$ W/cm$^{2}$. Their generation with high repetition rate lasers that operate at non-relativistic intensities…
Exploring quantum electrodynamics in the most extreme conditions, where electron-positron pairs can emerge in the presence of a strong background field, is now becoming possible in Compton collisions between ultraintense lasers and…
The interaction of laser pulses with thin grating targets, having a periodic groove at the irradiated surface, has been experimentally investigated. Ultrahigh contrast ($\sim 10^{12}$) pulses allowed to demonstrate an enhanced laser-target…
A new regime is described for Radiation Pressure Acceleration of a thin foil by an intense laser beam of above 10^20 W/cm^2. Highly monoenergetic proton beams extending to GeV energies can be produced with very high efficiency using…
Experimental characterization and comparison of the temporal features of plasma produced by ultrafast (100 fs, 800 nm) and short-pulse (7ns, 1064 nm) laser pulses from a high purity nickel and zinc targets, expanding into a nitrogen…
The interaction of ultrashort, high intensity laser pulses with thin foil targets leads to ion acceleration on the target rear surface. To make this ion source useful for applications, it is important to optimize the transfer of energy from…
Experiments on the excitation of propagating surface plasmons (SPs) by ultrashort, high intensity laser interaction with "grating" targets are reviewed. At intensities exceeding $10^{19}~\mbox{W cm}^{-2}$ on target, i.e. in the strongly…
A new laser-proton acceleration structure combined by two relativistic electron shells, a suprathermal electron shell and a thermal electron cloud is proposed for $a\gtrapprox80\sigma_0$, where a is the normalized laser field and $\sigma_0$…
Laser-plasma acceleration is an emerging technique for accelerating electrons to high energies over very short distances. The accelerated electron bunches have femtosecond duration, making them particularly relevant for applications such as…
We present an experimental demonstration of the efficient acceleration of electrons beyond 60 MeV using micro-channel plasma targets. We employed a high-contrast, 2.5 J, 32 fs short pulse laser interacting with a 5 \mu m inner diameter, 300…
Laser-plasma accelerators offer a compact means of producing high-energy electron beams, but their performance is fundamentally limited by dephasing between the accelerated electrons and the plasma wave. To overcome this limitation, we…
Plasma based acceleration is considered a promising concept for the next generation of linear electron-positron colliders. Despite the great progress achieved over last twenty years in laser technology, laser and beam driven particle…
Multi-GeV-class laser plasma accelerating modules are key components of laser plasma accelerators, because they can be used as a booster of an upstream plasma or conventional injector or as modular acceleration sections of a multi-staged…
We have investigated numerically the coupling between a 10 \si{MeV} electron bunch of high charge (\SI{> 100}{pc}) with a laser generated accelerating plasma wave. Our results show that a high efficiency coupling can be achieved using a…
A novel intense beam-driven scheme for high yield of the tri-alpha reaction 11B(p,{\alpha})2{\alpha} was investigated. We used a foam target made of cellulose triacetate (TAC, C_9H_{16}O_8) doped with boron. It was then heated…
Extreme laser pulses driving non-equilibrium processes in high density plasmas permit an increase of the fusion of hydrogen with the boron isotope 11 by nine orders of magnitude of the energy gains above the classical values. This is the…