Density and temperature characterization of long-scale length, near-critical density controlled plasma produced from ultra-low density plastic foam

This work was supported by Grant No. E1127 from Région Ile de France, the LABEX Plas@Par project, the Grant No. 11‐IDEX‐0004‐02 from Agence Nationale de la Recherche, and Grant No. 001528 from LaserLab-Europe. This work was also supported in part by Grant-in-Aid for Scietific Res (S) (Grant No. 15H05751) of the Japan Society for the Promotion of Science (JSPS). This work was also supported in part by the Ministry of Education and Science of the Russian Federation under Contract No. 14.Z50.31.0007. The ability to produce long-scale length (i.e. millimeter scale-length), homogeneous plasmas is of interest in studying a wide range of fundamental plasma processes. We present here a validated experimental platform to create and diagnose uniform plasmas with a density close or above the critical density. The target consists of a polyimide tube filled with an ultra low-density plastic foam where it was heated by x-rays, produced by a long pulse laser irradiating a copper foil placed at one end of the tube. The density and temperature of the ionized foam was retrieved by using x-ray radiography and proton radiography was used to verify the uniformity of the plasma. Plasma temperatures of 5-10 eV and densities around 1021 cm-3 are measured. This well-characterized platform of uniform density and temperature plasma is of interest for experiments using large-scale laser platforms conducting High Energy Density Physics investigations. Publisher PDF