Observations of proton beam enhancement due to erbium hydride on gold foil targets
- Department of Physics, Ohio State University, Columbus, Ohio 43210 (United States)
- Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, Livermore, California 94550 (United States)
- Department of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering, University of California San Diego, La Jolla, California 92093 (United States)
- Sandia National Laboratory, Albuquerque, New Mexico 87185 (United States)
- Department of Physics, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, Massachusetts 02139 (United States)
Recent theoretical work suggests that the conversion efficiency from laser to protons in laser irradiated thin foil experiments increases if the atomic mass of nonhydrogen atoms on the foil rear surface increases. Experiments were performed at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory Jupiter Laser Facility to observe the effect of thin foils coated with erbium hydride on the conversion efficiency from laser to protons. Gold foils with and without the rear surface coated with ErH{sub 3} were irradiated using the ultrashort pulse, 40 TW Callisto laser. An argon-ion etching system was used to remove naturally occurring nanometer thick surface layer contaminants from the hydride. With the etcher, gold with ErH{sub 3} showed a 25% increase in the conversion efficiency to protons above 3.4 MeV relative to contaminants, where C{sup +4} and H{sup +} were the dominant ion species. No difference in the ion signal was observed without first cleaning the hydrides. Simulations using the hybrid PIC code, LSP, revealed that the increase due to erbium hydride versus contaminants is 37% for protons above 3 MeV.
- OSTI ID:
- 21282126
- Journal Information:
- Physics of Plasmas, Vol. 16, Issue 9; Other Information: DOI: 10.1063/1.3212588; (c) 2009 American Institute of Physics; Country of input: International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA); ISSN 1070-664X
- Country of Publication:
- United States
- Language:
- English
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