Ion emission from plasmas produced by femtosecond pulses of short-wavelength free-electron laser radiation focused on massive targets: an overview and comparison with long-wavelength laser ablation

We report on ion emission from plasma produced on thick targets irradiated with nanosecond and femtosecond pulses delivered by mid-ultraviolet and soft x-ray lasers, respectively. To distinguish between different ion acceleration mechanisms, the maximum kinetic energy of ions produced under differen...

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Bibliographic Details
Main Authors: Krása, J, Nassisi, V, Burian, T, Hájková, V, Chalupský, J, Jelinek, S, Frantálová, K, Krupka, M, Kuglerová, Z, Singh, SK, Vozda, V, Vyšín, L, Wild, J, Šmíd, M, Perez-Martin, P, Pan, X, Kühlman, M, Pintor, J, Cikhardt, J, Dreimann, M, Eckermann, D, Rosenthal, F, Vinko, SM, Forte, A, Gawne, T, Campbell, T, Ren, S, Shi, Y, Hutchinson, T, Humphries, O, Preston, T, Makita, M, Nakatsutsumi, M, Köhler, A, Harmand, M, Toleikis, S, Falk, K, Juha, L
Format: Conference item
Language:English
Published: Society of Photo-optical Instrumentation Engineers 2023
Description
Summary:We report on ion emission from plasma produced on thick targets irradiated with nanosecond and femtosecond pulses delivered by mid-ultraviolet and soft x-ray lasers, respectively. To distinguish between different ion acceleration mechanisms, the maximum kinetic energy of ions produced under different interaction conditions is plotted versus laser fluence. The transformation of the time-of-flight detector signal into ion charge density distance-of-flight spectra makes it possible to determine the mean kinetic energy of the fastest ion groups based on the influence of the acoustic velocity of ion expansion. This allows obtaining additional characteristics of the ion production. The final energy of the group of fast ions determined using the ion sound velocity model is an order of magnitude larger in the fs-XFEL interaction than in the ns-UV one. On the contrary, the ablation yield of ions in our experiment is seven orders of magnitude greater when applying ns-UV laser pulses, not only due to higher energies of UV laser pulses, but also due to a significant difference in interaction and ion formation mechanisms.