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Author: Jonathan Lee Peebles
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 248
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Book Description
Relativistic laser plasma interactions in conjunction with an underdense pre-plasma have been shown to generate a two temperature component electron spectrum. The lower temperature component described by "ponderomotive scaling" is relatively well known and understood and is useful for applications such as the fast ignition inertial confinement fusion scheme. The higher energy electrons generated due to pre-plasma are denoted as "super-ponderomotive" electrons and facilitate interesting and useful applications. These include but are not limited to table top particle acceleration and generating high energy protons, x-rays and neutrons from secondary interactions. This dissertation describes experimental and particle-in-cell computational studies of the electron spectra produced from interactions between short pulse high intensity lasers and controlled pre-plasma conditions. Experiments were conducted at 3 laser labs: Texas Petawatt (University of Texas at Austin), Titan (Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory) and OMEGA-EP (University of Rochester). These lasers have different capabilities, and multiple experiments were carried out in order to fully understand super-ponderomotive electron generation and transport in the high intensity laser regime (I > 10^18 W/cm^2). In these experiments, an additional secondary long pulse beam was used to generate different scale lengths of "injected" pre-plasma while the pulse length and intensity of the short pulse beam were varied. The temperature and quantity of super-ponderomotive electrons were monitored with magnetic spectrometers and inferred via bremsstrahlung spectrometers while trajectory was estimated via Cu-K[alpha] imaging. The experimental and simulation data show that super-ponderomotive electrons require pulse lengths of at least 450 fs to be accelerated and that higher intensity interactions generate large magnetic fields which cause severe deflection of the super-ponderomotive electrons. Laser incidence angle is shown to be extremely important in determining hot electron trajectory. Longer pulse length data taken on OMEGA-EP and Titan showed that super-ponderomotive electrons could be created without the need for an initial pre-plasma due to the underdense plasma created during the high intensity interaction alone.
Author: Jonathan Lee Peebles
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 248
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Book Description
Relativistic laser plasma interactions in conjunction with an underdense pre-plasma have been shown to generate a two temperature component electron spectrum. The lower temperature component described by "ponderomotive scaling" is relatively well known and understood and is useful for applications such as the fast ignition inertial confinement fusion scheme. The higher energy electrons generated due to pre-plasma are denoted as "super-ponderomotive" electrons and facilitate interesting and useful applications. These include but are not limited to table top particle acceleration and generating high energy protons, x-rays and neutrons from secondary interactions. This dissertation describes experimental and particle-in-cell computational studies of the electron spectra produced from interactions between short pulse high intensity lasers and controlled pre-plasma conditions. Experiments were conducted at 3 laser labs: Texas Petawatt (University of Texas at Austin), Titan (Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory) and OMEGA-EP (University of Rochester). These lasers have different capabilities, and multiple experiments were carried out in order to fully understand super-ponderomotive electron generation and transport in the high intensity laser regime (I > 10^18 W/cm^2). In these experiments, an additional secondary long pulse beam was used to generate different scale lengths of "injected" pre-plasma while the pulse length and intensity of the short pulse beam were varied. The temperature and quantity of super-ponderomotive electrons were monitored with magnetic spectrometers and inferred via bremsstrahlung spectrometers while trajectory was estimated via Cu-K[alpha] imaging. The experimental and simulation data show that super-ponderomotive electrons require pulse lengths of at least 450 fs to be accelerated and that higher intensity interactions generate large magnetic fields which cause severe deflection of the super-ponderomotive electrons. Laser incidence angle is shown to be extremely important in determining hot electron trajectory. Longer pulse length data taken on OMEGA-EP and Titan showed that super-ponderomotive electrons could be created without the need for an initial pre-plasma due to the underdense plasma created during the high intensity interaction alone.
Author: Bhooshan S. Paradkar
Publisher:
ISBN: 9781267169051
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 86
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Book Description
In this thesis we present the dynamics of relativistic fast electrons produced in the laser-solid interactions at the intensities greater than 1018 W/cm2. In particular, the effects of pre-formed plasma in front of a solid target on the generation and transport of these fast electrons is studied. The presence of such a pre-formed plasma is ubiquitous in almost all the present short pulse high intensity laser-solid interaction experiments. First, the generation of fast electrons in the presence of pre-formed plasma of varying density scale-lengths is studied with the help of Particle In Cell (PIC) simulations. It is shown that the fast electrons energy increases with the increasing pre-formed plasma, consistent with the experimental observations. The possible mechanism of generation of such energetic electrons is studied. It is proposed that the interaction of plasma electrons with the laser in the presence of ambipolar electric field, generated due to the laser heating, can result in the electron acceleration beyond laser ponderomotive energy. The analytical and numerical studies of this heating mechanism are presented. In the second part of thesis, the influence of pre-formed plasma on the fast electrons transport is studied. Especially the physics of refluxing of these fast electrons due to the excitation of electrostatic sheath fields inside the pre-formed plasma is investigated. It is shown that this refluxing is responsible for the `annular ring shaped' copper K[alpha] x-ray emission observed in the recent high intensity laser-solid experiments.
Author: Joshua Joseph May
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 250
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Book Description
The continued development of the chirped pulse amplification technique has allowed for the development of lasers with powers of in excess of $10^{15}W$, for pulse lengths with durations of between .01 and 10 picoseconds, and which can be focused to energy densities greater than 100 giga-atmospheres. When such lasers are focused onto material targets, the possibility of creating particle beams with energy fluxes of comparable parameters arises. Such interactions have a number of theorized applications. For instance, in the Fast Ignition concept for Inertial Confinement Fusion \cite{Tabak:1994vx}, a high-intensity laser efficiently transfers its energy into an electron beam with an appropriate spectra which is then transported into a compressed target and initiate a fusion reaction. Another possible use is the so called Radiation Pressure Acceleration mechanism, in which a high-intensity, circularly polarized laser is used to create a mono-energetic ion beam which could then be used for medical imaging and treatment, among other applications. For this latter application, it is important that the laser energy is transferred to the ions and not to the electrons. However the physics of such high energy-density laser-matter interactions is highly kinetic and non-linear, and presently not fully understood. In this dissertation, we use the Particle-in-Cell code OSIRIS \cite{Fonseca:2002, Hemker:1999} to explore the generation and transport of relativistic particle beams created by high intensity lasers focused onto solid density matter at normal incidence. To explore the generation of relativistic electrons by such interactions, we use primarily one-dimensional (1D) and two-dimensional (2D), and a few three-dimensional simulations (3D). We initially examine the idealized case of normal incidence of relatively short, plane-wave lasers on flat, sharp interfaces. We find that in 1D the results are highly dependent on the initial temperature of the plasma, with significant absorption into relativistic electrons only possible when the temperature is high in the direction parallel to the electric field of the laser. In multi-dimensions, absorption into relativistic electrons arises independent of the initial temperature for both fixed and mobile ions, although the absorption is higher for mobile ions. In most cases however, absorption remains at $10's$ of percent, and as such a standing wave structure from the incoming and reflected wave is setup in front of the plasma surface. The peak momentum of the accelerated electrons is found to be $2 a_0 m_e c$, where $a_0 \equiv e A_0/m_e c^2$ is the normalized vector potential of the laser in vacuum, $e$ is the electron charge, $m_e$ is the electron mass, and $c$ is the speed of light. We consider cases for which $a_0>1$. We therefore call this the $2 a_0$ acceleration process. Using particle tracking, we identify the detailed physics behind the $2 a_0$ process and find it is related to the standing wave structure of the fields. We observe that the particles which gain energy do so by interacting with the laser electric field within a quarter wavelength of the surface where it is at an anti-node (it is a node at the surface). We find that only particles with high initial momentum -- in particular high transverse momentum -- are able to navigate through the laser magnetic field as its magnitude decreases in time each half laser cycle (it is an anti-node at the surface) to penetrate a quarter wavelength into the vacuum where the laser electric field is large. For a circularly polarized laser the magnetic field amplitude never decreases at the surface, instead its direction simply rotates. This prevents electrons from leaving the plasma and they therefore cannot gain energy from the electric field. For pulses with longer durations ($\gtrsim 250fs$), or for plasmas which do not have initially sharp interfaces, we discover that in addition to the $2 a_0$ acceleration at the surface, relativistic particles are also generated in an underdense region in front of the target. These particles have energies without a sharp upper bound. Although accelerating these particles removes energy from the incoming laser, and although the surface of the plasma does not stay perfectly flat and so the standing wave structure becomes modified, we find in most cases, the $2 a_0$ acceleration mechanism occurs similarly at the surface and that it still dominates the overall absorption of the laser. To explore the generation of relativistic electrons at a solid surface and transport of the heat flux of these electrons in cold or warm dense matter, we compare OSIRIS simulations with results from an experiment performed on the OMEGA laser system at the University of Rochester. In that experiment, a thin layer of gold placed on a slab of plastic is illuminated by an intense laser. A greater than order-of-magnitude decrease in the fluence of hot electrons is observed when those electrons are transported through a plasma created from a shock-heated plastic foam, as compared to transport through cold matter (unshocked plastic foam) at somewhat higher density. Our simulations indicate two reasons for the experimental result, both related to the magnetic field. The primary effect is the generation of a collimating B-field around the electron beam in the cold plastic foam, caused by the resistivity of the plastic. We use a Monte Carlo collision algorithm implemented in OSIRIS to model the experiment. The incoming relativistic electrons generate a return current. This generates a resistive electric field which then generates a magnetic field from Faraday's law. This magnetic field collimates the forward moving relativistic electrons. The collisionality of both the plastic and the gold are likely to be greater in the experiment than the 2D simulations where we used a lower density for the gold (to make the simulations possible) which heats up more. In addition, the use of 2D simulations also causes the plastic to heat up more than expected. We compensated for this by increasing the collisionality of the plasma in the simulations and this led to better agreement. The second effect is the growth of a strong, reflecting B-field at the edge of the plastic region in the shock heated material, created by the convective transport of this field back towards the beam source due to the neutralizing return current. Both effects appear to be caused primarily by the difference is density in the two cases. Owing to its higher heat capacity, the higher density material does not heat up as much from the heat flux coming from the gold, which leads to a larger resistivity. Lastly, we explored a numerical effect which has particular relevance to these simulations, due to their high energy and plasma densities. This effect is caused by the use of macro particles (which represent many real particles) which have the correct charge to mass ratio but higher charge. Therefore, any physics of a single charge that scales as $q^2/m$ will be artificially high. Physics that involves scales smaller than the macro-particle size can be mitigated through the use of finite size particles. However, for relativistic particles the spatial scale that matters is the skin depth and the cell sizes and particle sizes are both smaller than this. This allows the wakes created by these particles to be artificially high which causes them to slow down much faster than a single electron. We studied this macro-particle stopping power theoretically and in OSIRIS simulations. We also proposed a solution in which particles are split in to smaller particles as they gain energy. We call this effect Macro Particle Stopping. Although this effect can be mitigated by using more particles, this is not always computationally efficient. We show how it can also be mitigated by using high-order particle shapes, and/or by using a particle-splitting method which reduces the charge of only the most energetic electrons.
Author: Jun Li
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 101
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Book Description
This thesis studies several problems related to hot (energetic) electron generation in laser-plasma interactions in inertial confinement fusion (ICF). We study laserplasma instabilities (LPI) that can generate hot electrons in direct drive ICF under a range of laser intensities relevant to both the conventional hot-spot ignition and shock ignition. We study the in uence of LPI and hot electrons on the hydrodynamic evolution of ICF targets. We study hot electron generation in intense laser-plasma interactions in fast ignition cone targets. We also study how to implement particle collisions, which are important to hot electron generation in LPI, in Particle-in-Cell (PIC) codes on Graphic Process Units (GPU's). We find that ion density modulations can turn convective two-plasmon decay (TPD) and stimulated Raman scattering (SRS) instabilities to absolute ones in the region below the quarter critical density (nc=4). In this region, our uid simulations show that when a sinusoidal density modulation is superimposed on a linear density profile, convective two-plasmon decay (TPD) and stimulated Raman scattering (SRS) instabilities can become absolutely unstable under realistic direct-drive ICF conditions. Analysis of a three-wave model with a two-slope density profile shows that a sufficiently large change of the density gradient in a linear density profile can turn convective instabilities into absolute ones. An analytical expression is given for the threshold of the gradient change, which depends on the convective gain only. Growth rates for the absolute modes are also obtained. The threshold and growth rates from the two-slope profile are found to approximate those under sinusoidal modulations. These results explain the origin of the TPD modes below the nc=4 surface that in previous research were found to be critical to hot electron generation. Combining PIC and hydrodynamics simulations, we study the LPI and hydro evolution of coronal plasmas in an OMEGA EP[J.H. Kelly et al., 2006] long-scalelength experiment[Hu et al., 2013; Haberberger et al., 2014] with planar targets. Plasma and laser conditions are first obtained in a DRACO hydro simulation with only inverse-bremsstrahlung absorption. Using these conditions, an OSIRIS PIC simulation is performed to study laser absorption and hot-electron generation caused by LPI near the nc=4 region. The obtained information from the PIC simulation is subsequently coupled back to another DRACO simulation to examine how the LPI affect the overall hydrodynamics. The results show that the LPIinduced laser absorption can increase the electron temperature due to local heating by plasma waves. But it does not significantly change the density scale length in the corona because the high heat conductivity can spread the higher energy deposited near the nc=4 region in a wider region, and the portion of the energy carried by the hot electrons going towards high density region is still deposited beyond the nc=4 region. The collisional effects can affect the hot electron generation by damping the coupling waves of TPD and SRS instabilities. We have benchmarked the collision package in OSIRIS and adapted this package to a PIC code on graphics processors (GPU) with CUDA. The collision package is based on the cumulative collision theory, which treats a succession of small-angle binary collisions as a unique binary collision with a large scattering angle. It uses the computing cell in the GPUPIC code as the collision cell, and randomly pairs the particles in each collision cell for collision. In this process, it takes advantage of the fast on-chip shared memory and gets a remarkable performance. The benchmarks show that this collision package only needs to be called every 100 steps, and has a performance of 0:07 - 0:09ns=particle - step, only a 1:4% increase over the 5:36ns=particle - step without collisions on a Nvidia GTX 680 GPU. Test problems of beam-plasma scattering and electron plasma wave damping show that the collision frequencies calculated from the simulation results are consistent with theory. Hot electron generation is also important in fast ignition where typical laser intensities are higher than the hot-spot ignition or shock ignition. We perform PIC simulations for a cone-in-shell integrated fast-ignition experiment at the Omega Laser Facility[Boehly et al., 1997] with the initial plasma density profile taken from hydrodynamic simulations of the prepulse interaction with the gold cone. Hotelectron generation from laser-pre-plasma interactions and transport up to 100nc are studied. The simulations show a mean divergence half-angle of 68 degrees and 50% absorption for the hot electrons. The results show that the hot electrons are dominated in number by low-energy electrons but in energy by multi-MeV electrons. Electron transport between 5 and 100 nc is ballistic. In the late stage of the simulation, hot electron generation is largely independent of polarization, indicating a stochastic hot-electron-generation mechanism.
Author: Dino A. Jaroszynski
Publisher: CRC Press
ISBN: 1584887796
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 454
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Book Description
A Solid Compendium of Advanced Diagnostic and Simulation ToolsExploring the most exciting and topical areas in this field, Laser-Plasma Interactions focuses on the interaction of intense laser radiation with plasma. After discussing the basic theory of the interaction of intense electromagnetic radiation fields with matter, the book covers three ap
Author: Tammy Yee Wing Ma
Publisher:
ISBN: 9781124013404
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 334
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Book Description
The reentrant cone approach to Fast Ignition, an advanced Inertial Confinement Fusion scheme, remains one of the most attractive because of the potential to efficiently collect and guide the laser light into the cone tip and direct energetic electrons into the high density core of the fuel. However, in the presence of a preformed plasma, the laser energy is largely absorbed before it can reach the cone tip. Full scale fast ignition laser systems are envisioned to have prepulses ranging between 100 mJ to 1 J.A few of the imperative issues facing fast ignition, then, are the conversion efficiency with which the laser light is converted to hot electrons, the subsequent transport characteristics of those electrons, and requirements for maximum allowable prepulse this may put on the laser system. This dissertation examines the laser-to-fast electron conversion efficiency scaling with prepulse for cone-guided fast ignition. Work in developing an extreme ultraviolet imager diagnostic for the temperature measurements of electron-heated targets, as well as the validation of the use of a thin wire for simultaneous determination of electron number density and electron temperature will be discussed.
Author:
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ISBN:
Category :
Languages : en
Pages :
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Author: Shalom Eliezer
Publisher: CRC Press
ISBN: 1420033387
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 324
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Book Description
The Interaction of High-Power Lasers with Plasmas provides a thorough self-contained discussion of the physical processes occurring in laser-plasma interactions, including a detailed review of the relevant plasma and laser physics. The book analyzes laser absorption and propagation, electron transport, and the relevant plasma waves in detail. It al
Author:
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category :
Languages : de
Pages : 11
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Author: Helmut J. Schwarz
Publisher: Springer Science & Business Media
ISBN: 1461573351
Category : Technology & Engineering
Languages : en
Pages : 913
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Book Description
The 7th International Workshop in the series LASER INTERACTION AND RELATED PLASMA PHENOMENA continued the high standards established by the earlier meetings in this series. It was organized under the directorship of Heinrich Hora and George H. Miley at the Naval Postgraduate School in Monterey, California, with Fred Schwirzke as the local organizer. These workshops have presented many "firsts" in laser plasma interactions and especially in laser fusion. Some presentations provided continuity with the past, most represented advancements; however, in some workshops, progress did not appear to be occurring as rapidly as in others. Therefore, it was a special pleasure that in the present workshop when, on October 30, 1985, Chiyoe Yamanaka disclosed a breakthrough in the generation of fusion neutrons with laser fusion targets. The 7th Workshop also continued to represent other new fields of laser-plasma interaction. The progress reported was most pronounced in the fields of X-ray lasers, laser acceleration of particles by electrostatic double layers in plasmas, and a particle beam technique to solve the geometric problem of muon-catalyzed fusion. The development of laser-plasma interactions at medium to high laser intensities may be seen in its whole complexity from a brief review of prior conferences. At the first Workshop in 1969, a comprehensive review of the field was presented by the speakers with the opening address by N.
