Trident Home: Techniques

Short-Pulse Ion Acceleration

The Trident facility is a world-class performer in the area of ion acceleration from laser-solid target interactions.  Trident has demonstrated over 50 MeV protons at intensities of 5x10¹⁹ W/cm² with efficiencies approaching 5%.  These intense relativistic interactions can be diagnosed using a suite of instruments.  The proton beam can be easily diagnosed using the Radiochromic Film (RCF) Imaging Spectroscopy technique, where the beam is captured on a stack of RCF and deconvolved into spectral and spatial data.  Heavier ions can be diagnosed using Thomson Parabolas (TPs) loaded with either CR39 nuclear track detector or Image Plates (IPs).  The TPs allow one to differentiate between ion charge and mass with energy, thus enabling a full picture of the ion acceleration in a single shot.  This diagnostic led to the discovery of monoenergetic carbon beams at TRIDENT.

Contacts

Juan Fernandez
(505) 667-6575

Understanding the conditions for acceleration are important, and one initial condition affecting beam quality most is the laser spot profile.  TRIDENT has two main diagnostics for determining spot size quality: First on the short-pulse system is a suite of laser diagnostics that measure the laser beam far-field, near-field, spectrum, pulse duration, and phase front simultaneously; second in the North Target Chamber (NTC) there is an X-ray pinhole camera with 8-10 X imaging of x-rays above 1 keV, and an 1 micron imaging Backscatter Focusing Diagnostic (BFD).

Both of these systems give a very good indication of the beam quality on target and an image of the x-ray emitting area corresponding to the area on the front surface responsible for making the hot electrons for the ion acceleration.