Experimental platform for investigations of high-intensity laser plasma interactions in the magnetic field of a pulsed power generator

Abstract

An experimental platform for the studying of high-intensity laser plasma interactions in strong magnetic fields has been developed based on the 1 MA Zebra pulsed power generator coupled with the 50-TW Leopard laser. The Zebra generator produces 100-300 T longitudinal and transverse magnetic fields with different types of loads. The Leopard laser creates plasma at an intensity of 10 W/cm in the magnetic field of coil loads. Focusing and targeting systems are integrated in the vacuum chamber of the pulsed power generator and protected from the plasma debris and strong mechanical shock. The first experiments with plasma at laser intensity >2 × 10 W/cm demonstrated collimation of the laser produced plasma in the axial magnetic field strength >100 T.

Strong surface magnetic field generation in relativistic short pulse laser-plasma interaction with an applied seed magnetic field

“…As shown in Fig. 2c, the maximum magnitude of the surface magnetic field is approximately 19 within a factor of 1.5. For B seed B * seed , the generated magnetic field is reduced relative to B * gen .…”

“…(3.9) and (3.10) are undoubtedly overestimates, nevertheless, they establish the optimum seed magnetic field for surface field generation to be on the order of kT for few-µm-thick targets with a 0 10. Such fields are rapidly becoming experimentally relevant [19,27].…”

“…However, in the laser-plasma context, there is growing interest in scenarios where laserplasma interactions have the potential to self-generate strong magnetic fields or to amplify weak applied magnetic fields [7][8][9][10][11][12]. Such an objective is desirable to augment experimentally available magnetic fields from laser-driven coil [13][14][15][16] or pulsed power sources [17][18][19] and push the study of magnetized high energy density physics into new regimes. Most of the previous work has relied on instability-seeded growth [1,12], flux compression [11], or circularly polarized or Laguerre-Gaussian [7,20] laser pulses, which limits these laser-driven magnetic field generation techniques to specific experimental facilities.…”

Underdense relativistically thermal plasma produced by magnetically assisted direct laser acceleration

“…Lastly, relativistically thermal plasma can still be produced when the magnetic field is reduced to 200 T, which will enable the use of both pulsed power [22][23][24][25][26] and laser-driven [27][28][29][30] devices. Simulations conducted with a 200-T magnetic field and scaled pulse durations (ω c0 τ s and τ ℓ /τ L kept constant on decreasing B 0 ) exhibit similar saturation behavior with increasing L [Fig.…”

Sign reversal in magnetic field amplification by relativistic laser-driven microtube implosions

“…The emergence of new magnetic field generation techniques [1][2][3][4][5] and structured target fabrication capabilities [6][7][8][9] coupled with the continual development of relativistic short pulse lasers 10 is rapidly enabling new regimes of magnetized high energy density (HED) physics. The combination of a strong magnetic field and HED plasma offers the opportunity to observe new magnetization-related phenomena in areas such as laboratory astrophysics [11][12][13] and to obtain improvements in applications including inertial fusion energy [14][15][16] and ion acceleration [17][18][19][20] .…”