Hydrodynamic study of plasma amplifiers for soft-x-ray lasers: A transition in hydrodynamic behavior for plasma columns with widths ranging from 20μm to 2 mm

Eduardo Oliva, Philippe Zeitoun, Pedro Velarde, Marta Fajardo, Kevin Cassou, David Ros, Stephan Sebban, David Portillo, and Sebastien le Pape
Phys. Rev. E 82, 056408 – Published 12 November 2010

Abstract

Plasma-based seeded soft-x-ray lasers have the potential to generate high energy and highly coherent short pulse beams. Due to their high density, plasmas created by the interaction of an intense laser with a solid target should store the highest amount of energy density among all plasma amplifiers. Our previous numerical work with a two-dimensional (2D) adaptive mesh refinement hydrodynamic code demonstrated that careful tailoring of plasma shapes leads to a dramatic enhancement of both soft-x-ray laser output energy and pumping efficiency. Benchmarking of our 2D hydrodynamic code in previous experiments demonstrated a high level of confidence, allowing us to perform a full study with the aim of the way for 10100μJ seeded soft-x-ray lasers. In this paper, we describe in detail the mechanisms that drive the hydrodynamics of plasma columns. We observed transitions between narrow plasmas, where very strong bidimensional flow prevents them from storing energy, to large plasmas that store a high amount of energy. Millimeter-sized plasmas are outstanding amplifiers, but they have the limitation of transverse lasing. In this paper, we provide a preliminary solution to this problem.

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  • Received 5 August 2010

DOI:https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevE.82.056408

©2010 American Physical Society

Authors & Affiliations

Eduardo Oliva1,2,*, Philippe Zeitoun2, Pedro Velarde1, Marta Fajardo3, Kevin Cassou4, David Ros4, Stephan Sebban2, David Portillo1, and Sebastien le Pape5

  • 1Instituto de Fusión Nuclear, Universidad Politécnica de Madrid, 28006 Madrid, Spain
  • 2Laboratoire d’Optique Apliquée, ENSTA ParisTech, École Polytechnique, CNRS UMR 7639, 91761 Palaiseau Cedex, France
  • 3Instituto de Plasmas e Fusão Nuclear, Instituto Superior Técnico, 1049-001 Lisbon, Portugal
  • 4Laboratoire de Physique des Gaz et des Plasmas, UMR 8578, CNRS–Université Paris Sud XI, 91405 Orsay Cedex, France
  • 5Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, Livermore, California 94551, USA

  • *eduardo.oliva@ensta-paristech.fr

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Vol. 82, Iss. 5 — November 2010

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