Enhanced laser–plasma interactions using non-imaging optical concentrator targets
A. G. MacPhee, D. Alessi, Hui Chen, Ginevra Cochran, M. R. Hermann, D. H. Kalantar, A. Kemp, S. Kerr, A. Link, T. Ma, A. J. Mackinnon, D. Mariscal, D. J. Schlossberg, R. Tommasini, S. Vonhof, C. Widmayer, S. C. Wilks, G. J. Williams, Wade H. Williams, K. P. Youngblood
Abstract
Picosecond-scale laser–matter interactions using compound parabolic concentrators have demonstrated strongly relativistic ponderomotive effects with <mml:math xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" display="inline"> <mml:mo>∼</mml:mo> <mml:mrow class="MJX-TeXAtom-ORD"> <mml:mn>10</mml:mn> </mml:mrow> <mml:mo>×</mml:mo> </mml:math> increase in x-ray source brightness, positron production and multi-MeV proton acceleration versus flat targets, using a marginally relativistic intensity laser.