Superintense laser-driven photon activation analysis

Abstract

Laser-driven radiation sources are attracting increasing attention for several materials science applications. While laser-driven ions, electrons and neutrons have already been considered to carry out the elemental characterization of materials, the possibility to exploit high-energy photons remains unexplored. Indeed, the electrons generated by the interaction of an ultra-intense laser pulse with a near-critical material can be turned into high-energy photons via bremsstrahlung emission when shot into a high-Z converter. These photons could be effectively exploited to perform Photon Activation Analysis (PAA). In the present work, laser-driven PAA is proposed and investigated. We develop a theoretical approach to identify the optimal experimental conditions for laser-driven PAA in a wide range of laser intensities. Lastly, exploiting the Monte Carlo and Particle-In-Cell tools, we successfully simulate PAA experiments performed with both conventional accelerators and laser-driven sources. Under high repetition rate operation (i.e. 1−10 Hz) conditions, the ultra-intense lasers can allow performing PAA with performances comparable with those achieved with conventional accelerators. Moreover, laser-driven PAA could be exploited jointly with complementary laser-driven materials characterization techniques under investigation in existing laser facilities.

Laser plasma accelerated ultra-intense electron beam for efficiently exciting nuclear isomers

“…For production of nuclear isomers via photonuclear reactions driven by electron bremsstrahlung radiation, it is efficient for bremsstrahlung photon energy between 5 MeV and 30 MeV, e.g., γ-ray with energy 5 ∼ 10 MeV is propitious to drive photonuclear reaction (γ, γ ) and excite nuclei [65], 10 ∼ 30 MeV γ-rays are ideal to stimulate giant dipole resonance for photofission reactions (γ, xn) and producing fast neutrons [66] or nuclear isomers [64]. However, for photon energy beyond 30 MeV, the reaction is not effective anymore, as well as the bresstrahlung photon yield [67].…”

Numerical investigation of non-linear inverse Compton scattering in double-layer targets

“…In the field of ultra-high intensity ( > 10 18 W/cm 2 ) laser-plasma interactions, high-energy photon (x-rays and γ-rays) production has become of great interest for its impact on plasma dynamics (e.g., effects of radiation reaction on particles [1][2][3][4]), for fundamental studies (e.g., investigation of quantum-electrodynamics (QED) in strong fields [5] and plasmas [6,7]), and for several potential applications. Some of these are plasma diagnostics [8], interrogation of nuclear materials [9], radiography [10], tomography [11], and imaging [12] for industrial and medical purposes, as well as photo-nuclear spectroscopy [13,14].…”

New measurements of 92Mo(γ, n) and (γ, 3n) reactions using laser-driven bremsstrahlung γ-ray

“…With the rapid developments of laser electron accelerations, especially laser wakefield accelerations (LWFA) [1][2][3][4][5][6][7], laser-driven γ-ray can reach an extremely high intensities of 10 22-24 s −1 [8][9][10][11][12], which are several orders of magnitude stronger than other γ-ray sources such as laser Compton scattering (LCS) [13,14] or electron linac bremsstrahlung [15]. Researchers have shown considerable interests in laser-induced nuclear reactions in nuclear physics such as photonuclear studies [16,17], photon fission [16,18] and photon activation analysis [19].…”