Probing ultrafast laser plasma processes inside solids with resonant small-angle X-ray scattering

Abstract

Extreme states of matter exist throughout the universe e.g. inside planetary cores, stars or astrophysical jets. Such conditions are generated in the laboratory in the interaction of powerful lasers with solids, and their evolution can be probed with femtosecond precision using ultra-short X-ray pulses to study laboratory astrophysics, laser-fusion research or compact particle acceleration. X-ray scattering (SAXS) patterns and their asymmetries occurring at X-ray energies of atomic bound-bound transitions contain information on the volumetric nanoscopic distribution of density, ionization and temperature. Buried heavy ion structures in high intensity laser irradiated solids expand on the nanometer scale following heat diffusion, and are heated to more than 2 million Kelvin. These experiments demonstrate resonant SAXS with the aim to better characterize dynamic processes in extreme laboratory plasmas.

Heating in multi-layer targets at ultra-high intensity laser irradiation and the impact of density oscillation

“…Studying solids upon high-intensity laser irradiation allows to observe and learn about plasma dynamics that have impact on a wide variety of applications such as tumor therapy [1][2][3][4], fusion research [5][6][7][8] or laboratory astrophysics [9,10]. Previous studies have shown, that a specific target design can optimize the laser-target interaction towards preferred mechanisms like rear particle acceleration [11,12], front surface compression [13][14][15] or bulk heating [16,17]. Following this approach, we present a computational study of multi-layered (ML) targets to study and enhance specifically the target heating.…”