IMAGING OF PLASMAS USING PROTON BEAMS GENERATED BY ULTRA-INTENSE LASER PULSES

摘要

Proton imaging is a diagnostic with enormous potential for the investigation of fundamental plasma physics problems which were impossible to explore up to now. By using this diagnostic, for the first time the measurement of transient electric fields in dense plasmas has been obtained, determining their evolution on a picosecond scale with micrometric spatial resolution. The data is of great relevance to Inertial Confinement Fusion both in the conventional and Fast Ignitor approach. Detailed analysis and modelling is presently undergoing.