Speaker
Description
The interaction of high energy and high intensity laser pulses with matter produces a wide band of electromagnetic and particle radiation of remarkable intensity, easily overcoming several hundreds of megawatt. In particular, the electromagnetic content includes radiofrequency, microwave, infrared, visible, UV, X and γ components. The low frequency part of this emission constitutes the well-known “Electromagnetic Pulses” (EMPs), omnipresent effect of laser-matter interactions in all the regimes. It was experimentally found that they scale with the energy and especially with the intensity of the incoming laser pulses [1]. Planned new laser facilities with enhanced features are thus expected to show very high levels of EMPs. Their intensity can be in several cases so high – MV/m order - to make them a serious issue for every electronic device placed within and nearby the experimental chamber. This is the reason why they are a very hot research topic for both Inertial Confinement Fusion and Laser-Plasma Acceleration studies.
Although the main push has been devoted to mitigation techniques for these EMP fields, there is a number of interesting and promising studies aiming at exploiting the mechanisms at the base of their generation. They include the generation of kilotesla transient magnetic fields [2] and of traveling waves for particle acceleration and focusing [3].
A new application has been recently proposed in ENEA – Centro Ricerche Frascati [4] for creating large-intensity (MV/m and beyond) transient electric fields, with specific spatial distributions and existing in big volumes of space, for a large number of applications such as: medicine, biology, electromagnetic compatibility, material science, aerospace, electronics, sensors. Fields can have spatial distributions that can be tailored to the specific application: quasi-uniform, quasi-linear gradients, ...
We will describe here the methodology proposed, the associated numerical modeling and then the experiments performed with ENEA-ABC nanosecond laser facility (30 J, 3 ns) that proved the effectiveness of the proposed setup.
The methodology resolves in an original way the classical problem of generating quasi-uniform electric fields over large volumes and with very fast transients. This has the great potential to enable present and future laser plants to be innovative sources of tailored radiofrequency-microwave transient fields for a wide number of important applications.
- F. Consoli, et al. High Power Laser Science and Engineering, 8, e22 (2020). 2. J. Santos, et al, New Journal of Physics 17, 083051 (2015)
- S. Kar, et al. Nature Communications 7, 10792 (2016)
- F. Consoli et al, Patent PCT/IB2020/057464, WO2021/024226.
Acknowledgements
This work has been carried out within the framework of the EUROfusion Consortium, funded by the European Union via the Euratom Research and Training Programme (Grant Agreement No 101052200 — EUROfusion). Views and opinions expressed are however those of the author(s) only and do not necessarily reflect those of the European Union or the European Commission. Neither the European Union nor the European Commission can be held responsible for them. The involved teams have operated within the framework of the Enabling Research Project: ENR-IFE.01.CEA “Advancing shock ignition for direct-drive inertial fusion”.