Speaker
Description
The commissioning of the ELI-NP experimental areas [1,2] devoted to the laser-driven experiments started in mid-2020 with the 100 TW laser arms, and continued with the 1 PW arms until last year. Eventually, this year the first shot in the world at 10 PW [3,4] was fired on April 13. The experimental campaign started at the end of last year when the 10 PW laser beam was delivered to the interaction chamber dedicated to experiments with the short focal parabolic mirror. Initially, fundamental laser properties such as focusability, pulse duration, and pointing were investigated and shown to be remarkably good. The laser was focused down to 2.8 μm at FWHM, the pointing stability was better than 2 μrad, and the pulse duration was around 24 fs. The encircled laser energy was measured to be about 50%, therefore allowing for an effective laser peak intensity on target of about 6 x 10$^{22}$ Wcm$^{-2}$. The high-power shots were performed through a single plasma mirror both to improve the laser temporal contrast and reduce the probability of back-reflected laser light. To investigate the performance of the laser we have studied the proton acceleration via TNSA mechanism. For this purpose, several diagnostics were implemented to gather diverse information on the interaction of the laser with a solid target. Proton energies exceeding 100 MeV have been attained, even if the laser temporal contrast is affected by a few pre-pulses, that have been identified and partially fixed during the commissioning.
In this talk, the preliminary results obtained with the 10 PW laser system will be presented.
This work was supported by the Extreme Light Infrastructure Nuclear Physics (ELI-NP) Phase II, a project co-financed by the Romanian Government and the European Union through the European Regional Development Fund the Competitiveness Operational Programme 065208-5 (1/07.07.2016, COP, ID 1334), IMPULSE Project (grant 871161), and the Project PN 23210105, funded by the Ministry of Research, Innovation, and Digitalization. We gratefully acknowledge the contribution of the ELI-NP Laser Team, Thales, and collaborators (QUB-UK, CLF-RAL-UK, KPSI-QST-Japan, Osaka University-Japan, HZDR-Germany, UCSD-USA, University of Strathclyde-UK, LLE-USA, ELI-BL-CZ).
[1] D. Doria et al., “Overview of ELI-NP status and laser commissioning experiments with 1 PW and 10 PW class-lasers”, JINST, 15, C09053 (2020).
[2] K. A. Tanaka, et at., “Current status and highlights of the ELI-NP research program”, Matter and Radiation at Extremes 5(2) 024402 (2020)
[3] F. Lureaux et al., “10 petawatt lasers for extreme light applications”, Proc. SPIE 11259, Solid State Lasers XXIX: Technology and Devices, 112591J (2020)
[4] F. Lureau et al., “High-energy hybrid femtosecond laser system demonstrating 2 × 10 PW capability”, High Power Laser Science and Engineering, 8, E43 (2020)
