Bremsstrahlung emission and plasma characterization driven by moderately relativistic laser-plasma interactions

• Main Authors: Singh, Sushil, Armstrong, Chris D, Kang, Ning, Ren, Lei, Liu, Huiya, Hua, Neng, Rusby, Dean R, Klimo, Ondřej, Versaci, Roberto, Zhang, Yan, Sun, Mingying, Zhu, Baoqiang, Lei, Anle, Ouyang, Xiaoping, Lancia, Livia, Garcia, Alejandro Laso, Wagner, Andreas, Cowan, Thomas, Zhu, Jianqiang, Schlegel, Theodor, Weber, Stefan, McKenna, Paul, Neely, David, Tikhonchuk, Vladimir, Kumar, Deepak
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: 25-09-2020
• Subjects: Physics - Plasma Physics
• DOI: 10.48550/arxiv.2009.12307

Relativistic electrons generated by the interaction of petawatt-class short
laser pulses with solid targets can be used to generate bright X-rays via
bremsstrahlung. The efficiency of laser energy transfer into these electrons
depends on multiple parameters including the focused intensity and pre-plasma
level. This paper reports experimental results from the interaction of a high
intensity petawatt-class glass laser pulses with solid targets at a maximum
intensity of $10^{19}$ W/cm$^2$. In-situ measurements of specularly reflected
light are used to provide an upper bound of laser absorption and to
characterize focused laser intensity, the pre-plasma level and the generation
mechanism of second harmonic light. The measured spectrum of electrons and
bremsstrahlung radiation provide information about the efficiency of laser
energy transfer.