NUKLEONIKA 2011, 56(2):137-141

 


REAL-TIME DIAGNOSTICS OF FAST LIGHT ION BEAMS ACCELERATED BY A SUB-NANOSECOND LASER



Daniele Margarone, Josef Krása, Antonino Picciotto, Jan Prokupek

ELI Beamlines Project, Institute of Physics of the Academy of Science
of the Czech Republic (ASCR)
and Prague Asterix Laser System (PALS) Centre,
2 Na Slovance Str., 18221 Prague, Czech Republic

Multi-MeV proton and light ion beams had been produced using the 300 ps, kJ-class iodine laser, operating at Prague Asterix Laser System (PALS) Centre in Prague. The target material had been chosen in such a way so as to increase the proton beam current density (approaching 0.1 A/cm2 at the distance of 1 m from the source). The real-time ion detection was performed by means of a standard flat and ring ion collectors (IC) in the time-of-flight (TOF) configuration. The ICs had been shielded with aluminum foils of various thickness, in order to cut the long photo-peak contribution that is usually overlapping with the ultrafast particle signal, and to analyze mainly the laser-accelerated proton beam. The processing of the obtained experimental IC data is described in some detail, including the deconvolution of TOF signals, evaluation of the UV/soft-X-ray photo-peak absorption, and ion transmission calculations for different metallic filters.

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