First electron-positron pair experiments using the Osaka LFEX laser

ORAL

Abstract

The first laser driven electron-positron experiment using the high power LFEX laser at the Osaka University was performed by a collaborative group from LLNL and ILE. Together with high energy electrons (T$_{hot}\sim $10 MeV), relativistic positrons ($\sim $10 MeV) were observed from 1 kJ shots with laser intensity at about 10$^{20}$ W/cm$^2$ on 1 mm thick gold target. Electron accelerations in plasmas with density below critical were shown to play an important role in producing very high energy ($>$20 MeV) electrons, while the number of relatively low energy electrons ($\sim $10 MeV) appeared to be crucial to the total number of pairs produced. Detailed experiment results and simulations will be presented in this talk (by Dr. M. Nakai).

*This work was performed under the auspices of the U.S. DOE by LLNL under Contract DE-AC52-07NA27344 and LDRD (\#12-ERD-062), and partially funded by ILE's Joint research program.

Authors

  • Hui Chen

    • LLNL
  • M. Nakai

    • ILE
  • Y. Sentoku

    • U. Reno
  • Y. Arikawa

    • ILE
  • H. Azechi

    • ILE
  • P. Beiersdorfer

    • LLNL
  • S. Fujioka

    • ILE
  • C. Keane

    • LLNL
  • S. Kojima

    • ILE
  • W. Goldstein

    • LLNL
  • T. Morita

    • LLNL
  • T. Nagai

    • ILE
  • H. Nishimura

    • ILE
  • T. Ozaki

    • NIFS
  • J. Park

    • LLNL
  • Y. Sakawa

    • ILE
  • H. Takabe

    • ILE
  • G.J. Williams

    • LLNL
  • Z. Zhang

    • ILE