The interaction of ultra-intense high power lasers with solid state targets have been largely studied for twenty years as future compact proton and ion source. Indeed, the huge potential established on the target surface by the escaping electrons provides accelerating gradients of TV/m. This process, called TNSA, involves a large number of phenomena and is very difficult to study because of the picosecond scale dynamics.
At SPARC_LAB Test Facility the high power laser FLAME is employed in experiments with solid targets aiming to study possible correlations between ballistic fast electrons and accelerated protons. In detail, we have installed in the interaction chamber two different diagnostics, each one devoted to characterize one beam. The first one relies on Electro-Optic Sampling and it has been adopted to completely characterize the ultrafast electron components. On the other hand, a Time-Of-Flight detector, based on a Chemical-Vapor-Deposited (CVD) diamond, has allowed to retrieve the proton energy spectrum. In this work, we report preliminary studies about simultaneous temporal resolved measurements of both the first forerunners escaping electrons and the accelerated protons for different laser parameters.
Bisesto Fabrizio, GALLETTI MARIO, anania maria pia, Costa Gemma, Ferrario Massimo, Pompili Riccardo, Zigler Arie, Consoli Fabrizio, Salvadori Martina, Cipriani Mattia, Verona Claudio. Simultaneous observation of ultrafast electron and proton beams in TNSA[J]. High Power Laser Science and Engineering, , (): .