Carpathian Summer School, Sinaia, Romania 2012

1. Carpathian Summer School, Sinaia, Romania 2012 The Futureof Laser Nuclear Physics Ken Ledingham SUPA, Dept of Physics, University of Strathclyde, Glasgow G4 0NG, Scotland & AWE plc Aldermaston, Reading, RG7 4PR,

2. Over the last 10 years my group and now the SUPA group working with Klaus Spohr have worked on what we call “Laser Induced Nuclear Physics”- What is this?

3. What are the Laser Driven Nuclear Reactions? • Gamma induced fission • Gamma and proton cross sections • Laser produced neutron activation analysis • Photon and charged particle production of radio-active isotopes including PET isotopes • Laser production of monoenergetic protons

4. VULCAN petawatt laser (RAL) Energy 600 J (on target) Repetition 1 hour Wavelength 1.05 m Pulse duration 0.6 ps Intensity ~6x1020 Wcm-2 Maximum pulses per week ~25

5. Petawatt with Extensive Nuclear Shielding

6. Nuclear beams generated by an intense laser beam (Ulrich Schramm)

7. CCD camera “STRAIGHT THROUGH” DIRECTION “BLOW-OFF” DIRECTION Protons Protons Al target Cu activation stack Cu activation stack CPA pulse Proton spectra using activation techniques

8. 5 cm Behind the target – “straight through” BACK direction 5 cm 5 cm FRONT 5 cm Proton Spectra from 100TW In front of target – “blow-off” direction

9. Monoenergetic Protons from Mass Limited Targets

10. Experimental Arrangement Multi Channel Plates

11. Laser Irradiation of DOT Targets

12. Simulation of the experiment 2D-PIC simulation for following conditions: IL= 3  1019 W/cm2, 5 µm Ti-foil + 0.5 µm PMMA dot (20  20) µm2

15. 20 m drop21053f ) 1E8 -1 deuterons ((20 keV sr) 1E7 0.2 0.4 0.6 0.8 1 2 4 energy (MeV) First „Monoenergetic“ Proton Beams from isolated water droplets Ti-Sa laser pulse: 40 fs, 21019 W/cm2, contrast 10-8 forward Protons : Thomson spectrometer Important: laser pulse shape and target structure

16. Mass Limited Cone Targets Kirk Flippo, Tom Cowan et al

20. Snow Targets

21. Laser Irradiation of Snow targets

23. Laser Wakefield Acceleration of Electrons

24. Lawrence Berkeley National Lab: W. Leemans, B. Nagler, C. Tóth, K. Nakamura, C. Geddes, E. Esarey, C. Schroeder Oxford University: S. M. Hooker and A. J. Gonsalves • Waveguide: • Guiding of 40 TW laser pulses: • in capillary discharge waveguide • over 33 mm of plasma • Electron acceleration: • Generation of e-beams with: • %-level energy spread • mrad divergence • Energy up to 1 GeV Input spot Exit spot Electron acceleration in a capillary discharge waveguide

25. Applications of Laser Driven Particle Beams

26. PET Isotope Production

27. Laser Beam

28. Laser driven PET isotope production Activity as a function of laser intensity. The black and red hatched areas are for typical patient doses for 18F and 11C

29. Laser-driven photo-transmutation of 129I – a long lived nuclear waste product • 129I has a half-life of 15.7 x 106 years • 128I has a half-life of 25 mins • The transmutation was carried out using a laser driven (, n) reaction

30. Nuclear activation: Experiment arrangement Activation samples Iodine samples Laser pulse Resistively heated target

31. (,n) reaction in 129I using a Ge detector to measure decay of 128I

32. The Generation of Gamma ray light sources • First of all you require GeV electron beams generated by lasers or by conventional linacs • Compton backscatter laser photons to produce multi-MeV gamma ray beams.

33. IR bunch Electron bunch First x-rays of collision produced when bunches 1st meet. A Last x-rays of collision produced when bunches separate. A Z X-rays A through Z travel at c with electron bunch. Time Z A IR-electron bunch collision sx-rays = selectrons Courtesy George Neil, JLab

34. Peak brilliance of light sources with star of GRLS at 1MeV 15 orders of magnitude greater than all synchrotrons and FELS

35. Gamma Ray Light Sources (GRLS) NUCLEAR Applications of Intense Gamma Ray Beams – Nuclear resonance Fluorescence

36. GRLS) Gamma ray resonant fluorescence Mainland security Nuclear waste reclassification

37. Storing radioactive waste at power stations There are hundreds of thousands of such barrels world wide with very little knowledge of the contents. GRLSs would enable certifiable classification of the waste contents

38. Depository of hundreds of drums of radioactive waste

39. Nuclear Resonance Fluorescence • Example of NRF spectra obtained from a plutonium target. • Level Scheme for Pu 239

40. Nuclear Physics at High Temperatures This is a nuclear regime which is best carried out using lasers - opportunities at XFEL and ELI Bucharest

41. At present there is no laser induced reaction which cannot be done better using conventional accelerators – at high temperatures this could be very different

42. What do we intend to do at high temperatures – modification of the half life of 26Al using the high temps produced by coincident laser driven particle beams

43. How do we make the Al26 -use the PW short pulse laser to generate a proton beam and then use a Mg26(p,n)Al26reaction Simultaneously heating with a laser produced gamma ray beam or thus a Mg26(pγ,n)Al26 reaction

44. Al26 Decay scheme

45. Motivation Level scheme Skelton R et. al., Phys.Rev. C35(1),45,1987 Interstellar abundance • 26Al in the astrophysical context using a gamma camera • 1809 keV line in Galaxy NASA Compton Gamma Ray observatory (COMPTEL) 1991-2000 & Plüschke S et al., arXiv:astro-ph/0104047v1 Evolution of stellar abundance Voss R et al., Astronomy & Astrophysics, 504, 531, 2009

46. Schematic of laser plasma nuclear 26Al experiment Use the NIF PW laser at 1022 W/cm2 or VULCAN Edriver~15J High temperature production pulse (hard photon beam) 'p-production pulse' TSNA I~1018-20 Wcm-2 26Mg p Shielding Canvas Diamond Target NaI or Ge

47. ORGAM Detector System

49. depleted 238U thickness: 8μm encapsulated by Al-foils Fission products & trajectories Al-production target isochoric heated volume Proton beam Laser ~200μm Cu-stack 0-40μm variable Front Al-sheet 1 thickness: 10μm isochoric heated Back Al-sheet 2 thickness:10μm Al-U-Al sandwich target Laser Induced Fission of 238U and Nuclear Fission Yields as a Fn of Temp This was an experiment to be carried out using short pulse laser isochoric heating but could be done by NIF heating

50. Nuclear Excitation in Plasmas NEET/NEEC Nuclear Opportunities at XFEL 2015 and ELI