Laser-ion acceleration of tritium for nuclear reaction experiments

Dr. Arnold Schwemmlein
Postdoctoral Fellow
Laboratory for Laser Energetics
University of Rochester

Laser-ion acceleration has been identified as a robust and straight-forward approach to generate multi-MeV ion beams at laser facilities like OMEGA. This is especially attractive for triton beams, since it confines all tritium to the target chamber. Another advantage is the high ion pulse intensity that can be achieved, about 10¹² particles per ns, which is very beneficial for activation experiments producing short-lived isotopes. OMEGA is uniquely positioned to study these triton-induced reactions on light nuclei, like ⁷Li(t, p)⁹Li and ⁷Li(t, α)⁶He, which are relevant for big bang nucleosynthesis. However, laser accelerated ion beams tend to exhibit an exponential energy spectrum over several MeV, which makes cross-section measurements more challenging. This talk will discuss mitigation approaches for this issue, as well as recent nuclear experiments at OMEGA employing a laser-accelerated triton beam.

Hosted by Prof. Aprahamian