Petapascal Pressure Driven by Fast Isochoric Heating with a Multipicosecond Intense Laser Pulse
Kazuki Matsuo, Naoki Higashi, Natsumi Iwata, Shohei Sakata, Seungho Lee, T. Johzaki, Hiroshi Sawada, Y. Iwasa, King Fai Farley Law, Hiroki Morita, Yugo Ochiai, Sadaoki Kojima, Y. Abe, M. Hata, Takayoshi Sano, Hideo Nagatomo, Atsushi Sunahara, A. Morace, Akifumi Yogo, M. Nakai, H. Sakagami, Tetsuo Ozaki, Kohei Yamanoi, T. Norimatsu, Yoshiki Nakata, Shigeki Tokita, Junji Kawanaka, Hiroyuki Shiraga, K. Mima, H. Azechi, Ryosuke Kodama, Yasunobu Arikawa, Y. Sentoku, Shinsuke Fujioka
Abstract
Fast isochoric laser heating is a scheme to heat matter with a relativistic intensity (>10^{18} W/cm^{2}) laser pulse for producing an ultrahigh-energy-density (UHED) state. We have demonstrated an efficient fast isochoric heating of a compressed dense plasma core with a multipicosecond kilojoule-class petawatt laser and an assistance of externally applied kilotesla magnetic fields for guiding fast electrons to the dense plasma. A UHED state of 2.2 PPa is achieved experimentally with 4.6 kJ of total laser energy that is one order of magnitude lower than the energy used in the conventional implosion scheme. A two-dimensional particle-in-cell simulation confirmed that diffusive heating from a laser-plasma interaction zone to the dense plasma plays an essential role to the efficient creation of the UHED state.