Proton radiography of a laser-driven implosion

Journal article

Protons accelerated by a picosecond laser pulse have been used to radiograph a 500μm diameter capsule, imploded with 300 J of laser light in 6 symmetrically incident beams of wavelength 1.054μm and pulse length 1 ns. Point projection proton backlighting was used to characterize the density gradients at discrete times through the implosion. Asymmetries were diagnosed both during the early and stagnation stages of the implosion. Comparison with analytic scattering theory and simple Monte Carlo simulations were consistent with a 3±1g/cm3 core with diameter 85±10μm. Scaling simulations show that protons >50MeV are required to diagnose asymmetry in ignition scale conditions. © 2006 The American Physical Society.

Authors: MacKinnon, A; Patel, P; Borghesi, M; Clarke, R; Freeman, R

• Journal: Physical Review Letters
• Volume: 97
• Issue: 4
• Publication date: 2006-01-01
• DOI: 10.1103/PhysRevLett.97.045001
• EISSN: 1079-7114
• ISSN: 0031-9007
• Language: English