Particle Acceleration 3

[HEDS10-04] Effect of a plasma mirror on the interactions of intense laser pulses with micron-scale cluster targets

*Yuji Fukuda¹, Masato Kanasaki², Takafumi Asai^1,2, Chihiro Inoue^1,2, Seiichiro Mochizuki², Reona Ozaki^1,2, Keita Toyonaga², Kaoru Maekawa², Takumi Minami^1,3, Kentaro Sakai⁴, Kosuke Himeno³, Tomoya Taguchi³, Kazumasa Oda³, Soichiro Suzuki³, Fuka Nikaido³, Kiyochika Kuramoto³, Toshiharu Yasui³, Syogo Isayama⁵, Syuta Tanaka⁶, Atsushi Tokiyasu⁷, Hideki Kohri⁸, Sergey N. Ryazantsev⁹, Tatiana Pikuz¹⁰, Satoshi Kodaira¹¹, Tomoya Yamauchi², Yuki Abe³, Yasuhiro Kuramitsu³, Akira Kon¹, Kotaro Kondo¹, Yuji Mashiba¹, Yasuhiro Miyasaka¹, Koichi Ogura¹, Akito Sagisaka¹, Hiromitsu Kiriyama¹ (1. Kansai Institute for Photon Science (KPSI), National Institutes for Quantum Science and Technology (QST), 2. Graduate School of Maritime Sciences, Kobe University, 3. Graduate school of Engineering, Osaka University, 4. National Institute for Fusion Science (NIFS), 5. Interdisciplinary Graduate School of Engineering Sciences, Kyushu University, 6. College of Science and Engineering, Aoyama Gakuin University, 7. Research Center for Electron Photon Science (ELPH), Tohoku University, 8. Research Center for Nuclear Physics (RCNP), Osaka University, 9. HB11 Energy Holdings Pty Ltd., Australia, 10. Institute for Open and Transdisciplinary Research Initiatives (OTRI), Osaka University, 11. National Institute of Radiological Sciences (NIRS), National Institutes for Quantum Science and Technology (QST))

The effect of a plasma mirror (PM) on the laser-cluster interactions has been clearly visualized for the first time by using the Thomson scattering imaging. With the PM, the accelerated maximum proton energy has been increased up to ~35 MeV. By means of x-ray spectroscopy, after improvement of laser contrast by the PM, the interesting features of Ly_α-, He_α-, and K_α-line profiles of Ar have been observed.