The Centro de Laseres Pulsados in Salamanca Spain has recently started operation phase and the first User access period on the 6 J 30 fs 200 TW system (VEGA 2) already started at the beginning of 2018. In this paper we report on two commissioning experiments recently performed on the VEGA 2 system in preparation for the user campaign. VEGA 2 system has been tested in different configurations depending on the focusing optics and targets used. One configuration (long focal length f=130 cm) is for under-dense laser-matter interaction where VEGA 2 is focused onto a low density gas-jet generating electron beams (via laser wake field acceleration mechanism) with maximum energy up to 500 MeV and an X-ray betatron source with a 10 keV critical energy. A second configuration (short focal length f=40 cm) is for over-dense laser-matter interaction where VEGA 2 is focused onto an 5 µm thick Al target generating a proton beam with a maximum energy of 10 MeV and average energy of 7-8 MeV and temperature of 2.5 MeV. In this paper we present preliminary experimental results.

a b s t r a c tAt the SPARC_LAB facility of INFN-LNF we are installing a transport lines for ultra-short electron bunches and another for ultra-intense laser pulses, generated by the SPARC photo-injector and by the FLAME laser in a synchronized fashion at the tens of fs level, to co-propagate inside a hydrogen filled glass capillary, in order to perform acceleration of the electron bunch by a plasma wave driven by the laser pulse. The main aim of this experiment is to demonstrate that a high brightness electron beam can be accelerated by a plasma wave without any significant degradation of its quality. Motivations of the technical choices are made and expected performances are reported.

Among the existing elemental characterization techniques, particle-induced x-ray emission (PIXE) and energy-dispersive x-ray (EDX) spectroscopy are two of the most widely used in different scientific and technological fields. Here, we present the first quantitative laser-driven PIXE and laser-driven EDX experimental investigation performed at the Centro de Láseres Pulsados in Salamanca. Thanks to their potential for compactness and portability, laser-driven particle sources are very appealing for materials science applications, especially for materials analysis techniques. We demonstrate the possibility to exploit the x-ray signal produced by the co-irradiation with both electrons and protons to identify the elements in the sample. We show that, using the proton beam only, we can successfully obtain quantitative information about the sample structure through laser-driven PIXE analysis. These results pave the way toward the development of a compact and multifunctional apparatus for the elemental analysis of materials based on a laser-driven particle source.

We present a scintillator based detector able to measure both spatial and energy information at High repetition rate (HRR) with a relatively simple design. It has been built at the Center of Pulsed Laser (CLPU) in Salamanca and tested in the proton accelerator at the Centro de Micro-Análisis de Materiales (CMAM) in Madrid. The detector has been demonstrated to work in HRR mode by reproducing the performance of the radiochromic film detector. It represents a new class of on-line detectors for Laser-plasma physics experiments in the new emerging High Power and HRR laser systems.

About 50 years ago, Sarachick and Schappert [Phys. Rev. D. 1, 2738-2752(1970] showed that relativistic Thomson scattering leads to wavelength shifts that are proportional to the laser intensity. About 28 years later Chen et al. [Nature 396, 653-655 (1998)] used these shifts to estimate their laser intensity near 10 18 W/cm 2 . More recently there have been several theoretical studies aimed at exploiting nonlinear Thomson scattering as a tool for direct measurement of intensities well into the relativistic regime. We present the first quantitative study of this approach for intensities between 10 18 and 10 19 W/cm 2 . We show that the spectral shifts are in reasonable agreement with estimates of the peak intensity extracted from images of the focal area obtained at reduced power. Finally, we discuss the viability of the approach, its range of usefulness and how it might be extended to gauge intensities well in excess of 10 19 W/cm 2 .