Development of Focusing Plasma Mirrors for Ultraintense Laser-Driven Particle and Radiation Sources

Wilson, Robbie; King, Martin; Gray, Ross; Carroll, David; Dance, Rachel; Butler, Nicholas; Armstrong, Chris; Hawkes, Steve; Clarke, Robert; Robertson, David; Bourgenot, Cyril; Neely, David; McKenna, Paul

doi:10.3390/qubs2010001

Development of Focusing Plasma Mirrors for Ultraintense Laser-Driven Particle and Radiation Sources

Wilson, Robbie; King, Martin; Gray, Ross; Carroll, David; Dance, Rachel; Butler, Nicholas; Armstrong, Chris; Hawkes, Steve; Clarke, Robert; Robertson, David; Bourgenot, Cyril; Neely, David; McKenna, Paul

Authors

Robbie Wilson

Martin King

Ross Gray

David Carroll

Rachel Dance

Nicholas Butler

Chris Armstrong

Steve Hawkes

Robert Clarke

David Robertson

Cyril Bourgenot cyril.bourgenot@durham.ac.uk
Associate Professor

David Neely

Paul McKenna

Abstract

Increasing the peak intensity to which high power laser pulses are focused can open up new regimes of laser-plasma interactions, resulting in the acceleration of ions to higher energies and more efficient generation of energetic photons. Low f-number focusing plasma mirrors, which re-image and demagnify the laser focus, provide an attractive approach to producing higher intensities, without requiring significant changes to the laser system. They are small, enhance the pulse intensity contrast and eliminate the requirement to expose expensive optics directly to target debris. We report on progress made in a programme of work to design, manufacture and optimise ellipsoidal focusing plasma mirrors. Different approaches to manufacturing these innovative optics are described, and the results of characterisation tests are presented. The procedure developed to align the optics is outlined, together with initial results from their use with a petawatt-level laser.

Citation

Wilson, R., King, M., Gray, R., Carroll, D., Dance, R., Butler, N., …McKenna, P. (2018). Development of Focusing Plasma Mirrors for Ultraintense Laser-Driven Particle and Radiation Sources. Quantum Beam Science, 2(1), Article 1. https://doi.org/10.3390/qubs2010001

Journal Article Type	Article
Acceptance Date	Jan 5, 2018
Online Publication Date	Jan 9, 2018
Publication Date	Jan 9, 2018
Deposit Date	Feb 13, 2018
Publicly Available Date	Apr 5, 2018
Journal	Quantum Beam Science
Publisher	MDPI
Peer Reviewed	Peer Reviewed
Volume	2
Issue	1
Article Number	1
DOI	https://doi.org/10.3390/qubs2010001

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© 2018 by the authors; licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland. This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/).