Networks of High-Repetition-Rate Proton Spectrometers via Low-Level Hardware Development

Ultra-intense laser technology has the potential to serve as a compact source of energetic proton/ion beams ($>$ MeV) for applications in science, medicine, defense, and industry. High scientific data-rates could accelerate our understanding and enable use of "big data" statistical techniques and machine learning. Currently, there is a need for high quality, single-shot proton spectra from the most-compact, highest-repetition rate laser-plasma accelerator systems (1 Hz, 10 Hz, kHz). We explore whether low-level hardware development by our own scientists may meet the needs of our field. We have prototyped a network of inexpensive, compact magnetic proton spectrometers with digital proton detection by scintillator-coupled line CCDs driven by STM32 Cortex-M7 microcontrollers. Our system is designed to scale to large numbers of simultaneous proton spectrometer diagnostics and to meet the needs of high data-rate experiments in laser-driven proton acceleration, e.g. (1) experiments capturing the correlation between single-shot proton spectra at multiple locations within the experimental chamber, (2) identifying and filtering results in real-time based on "rare" spectra due to shot-to-shot fluctuations, and (3) real-time integration with active feedback systems.