Details

Autor(en) / Beteiligte

• Istokskaia, Valeriia
• Tosca, Marco
• Giuffrida, Lorenzo
• Psikal, Jan
• Grepl, Filip
• Kantarelou, Vasiliki
• Stancek, Stanislav
• Di Siena, Sabrina
• Hadjikyriacou, Arsenios
• McIlvenny, Aodhan
• Levy, Yoann
• Huynh, Jaroslav
• Cimrman, Martin
• Pleskunov, Pavel
• Nikitin, Daniil
• Choukourov, Andrei
• Belloni, Fabio
• Picciotto, Antonino
• Kar, Satyabrata
• Borghesi, Marco
• Lucianetti, Antonio
• Mocek, Tomas
• Margarone, Daniele

Titel

A multi-MeV alpha particle source via proton-boron fusion driven by a 10-GW tabletop laser

Ist Teil von

• Communications physics, 2023-02, Vol.6 (1), p.27-8, Article 27

Ort / Verlag

London: Nature Publishing Group

Erscheinungsjahr

2023

Link zum Volltext

Quelle

Free E-Journal (出版社公開部分のみ）

Beschreibungen/Notizen

• Abstract Nuclear fusion between protons and boron-11 nuclei has undergone a revival of interest thanks to the rapid progress in pulsed laser technology. Potential applications of such reaction range from controlled nuclear fusion to radiobiology and cancer therapy. A laser-driven fusion approach consists in the interaction of high-power, high-intensity pulses with H- and B-rich targets. We report on an experiment exploiting proton-boron fusion in CN-BN targets to obtain high-energy alpha particle beams (up to 5 MeV) using a very compact approach and a tabletop laser system with a peak power of ~10 GW, which can operate at high-repetition rate (up to 1 kHz). The secondary resonance in the cross section of proton-boron fusion (~150 keV in the center-of-mass frame) is exploited using a laser-based approach. The generated alpha particles are characterized in terms of energy, flux, and angular distribution using solid-state nuclear-track detectors, demonstrating a flux of ~10 5 particles per second at 10 Hz, and ~10 6 per second at 1 kHz. Hydrodynamic and particle-in-cell numerical simulations support our experimental findings. Potential impact of our approach on future spread of ultra-compact, multi-MeV alpha particle sources driven by moderate intensity (10 16 -10 17  W/cm 2 ) laser pulses is anticipated.