Nuclear fusion from Coulomb explosions of deuterated methane clusters subjected to ultraintense femtosecond laser pulses

This paper reports that Coulomb explosions taken place in the experiment of heteronuclear deuterated methane clusters ((CD₄)₂) in a gas jet subjected to intense femtosecond laser pulses (170mJ, 70fs) have led to table-top laser driven DD nuclear fusion. The clusters produced in supersonic expansion had an average size of about 5nm in radius and the laser intensity used was 3×10¹⁷W/cm².The measured maximum and average energies of deuterons produced in the laser--cluster interaction were 60 and 13.5keV, respectively. From DD collisions of energetic deuterons, a yield of 2.5(±0.4)×10⁴ fusion neutrons of 2.45MeV per shot was realized, giving rise to a neutron production efficiency of about 1.5×10⁵ per joule of incident laser pulse energy. Theoretical calculations were performed and a fairly good agreement of the calculated neutron yield with that obtained from the present experiment was found.     

激光加速质子束空间电荷力研究（英文）

激光加速器可以输出具有独特品质的质子束,例如μm尺寸、ps脉冲长度和高峰值电流。强流粒子束的空间电荷力效应较强,对面向应用的束流传输提出了挑战。通过二维PIC模拟研究了激光加速后与质子速度接近的电子的影响。采用椭球模型估算空间电荷力的影响,比较不同电荷分布的差异。结果表明每束团质子数超过10¹⁰后空间电荷力显著影响质子束传输,甚至严重破坏束流品质。空间电荷力的影响在20 ps后显著减弱,离开靶约1.2 mm。