Acceleration of ions from solid targets at HiLASE Perla B laser Open Access Experiment

From 28/06/2021 to 13/07/2021, Queen’s University of Belfast (QUB, UK) in collaboration with ELI Beamlines (Czech Republic) are studying the acceleration of ions from solid targets at one of the HiLASE Centre’s user beamlines in the frame of a Laserlab Europe access.

For the experiment, Ion Acceleration compact chamber at HiLASE, Perla-B beamline will be used within the frame of the Open Access programme. Picosecond laser pulses from the HiLASE Perla-B system operating at a repetition rate of 1 kHz are tightly focused on solid samples with the aim to optimize the energy of accelerated proton bunches, which are monitored online using high repetition rate ion diagnostics in time-of-flight geometry.

This is a pioneering experimental investigation using laser systems like Perla-B with high repetition rate. Such optimized proton beams might allow to trigger laser-induced nuclear reactions such as the neutron-free proton-boron fusion, and to generate repetitive alpha-particle sources with a truly table-top installation.

HiLASE Team: Jaroslav Huynh, Martin Cimrman, Yoann Levy (HiLASE Centre coordinator)

ELI Beamlines Team: Lorenzo Giuffrida, Valeriia Istokskaia, Filip Grepl, Marco Tosca, Stanislav Stancek, Arsenios Hadjikyriacou, Kantarelou Vasiliki

QUB Team: Daniele Margarone, Satyabrata Kar, Marco Borghesi