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Motivated by recent experimental initiatives, such as at the Helmholtz International Beamline for Extreme Fields (HIBEF) at the European X-ray Free Electron Laser (XFEL), we calculate the birefringent scattering of x-rays at the combined field of two optical (or near-optical) lasers and compare various scenarios. In order to facilitate an experimental detection of quantum vacuum diffraction and birefringence, special emphasis is placed on scenarios where the difference between the initial and final x-ray photons is maximized. Apart from their polarization, these signal and background photons may differ in propagation direction (corresponding to scattering angles in the mrad regime) and possibly energy., Comment: 7 pages, 1 figure

The relativistic laser matter interaction is a complex interplay of ionization, extreme current densities, rapidly evolving strong fields and acceleration processes. Understanding the interaction physics is a challenging but highly rewarding endeavor. The unprecedented brightness of XFELs opens a new window for discovering the interior of solid-density plasmas created by relativistic laser interactions with matter, resolving the relevant femtosecond and sub-micrometer scales experimentally. Here, we focus on discussing the feasibility of probing the magnetic fields by X-Ray polarimetry via Faraday rotation using XFEls.

Ultra-intense laser-matter interactions are a major research area in in modern plasma physics. One of the essential elements is the relativistic electron generation and transport dynamics. At present, a predictive understanding of high-intensity laser-matter interactions is severely hampered by the lack of self-consistent models for the ionization dynamics, coupled with the complex electron transport. We establish the feasibility of using XFEL femtosecond X-ray sources to probe the spatial correlations inside of the solid-density plasma using small angle X-ray scattering (SAXS) and resonant SAXS, to obtain for the first time information on the spatial and temporal evolution of the electron density and ionization dynamics with few fs and few nm resolution. The local and instantaneous ionization state can be measured when the X-ray beam is tuned to a bound-bound resonance of a particular charge state. The atomic scattering factor at the threshold of core electron excitation increases for example at Kα excitations in highly ionized Cu to a magnitude of more than 100 times the Thomson cross section per ion.

Overview on Resonant Coherent X-Ray Diffraction Simulations of Laser Plasma Interaction

We show that probing the ionization evolution and plasma dynamics in high power laser interaction with matter on the femtosecond and nanometer scale is in reach with state of the art X-ray lasers at facilities such as LCLS, SACLA and the European XFEL. We have conducted particle-in-cell simulations including radiative and collisional atomic processes to generate absolute predictions for synthetic scattering images using SAXS and RCXDI techniques. We could show that plasma dynamics from the target front side and bulk can be distinguished and plasma instabilities identified and their development could be temporarily involved. Inclduing atomic physics models from SCFly we could furthermore show that the temporal evolution of the ionization dynamics can be probed by resonant scattering.

The generation of intense ion beams from high-intensity laser-generated plasmas has been the focus of research for the last decade. In the LIGHT collaboration the expertise of heavy ion accelerator scientists and laser and plasma physicists has been combined to investigate the prospect of merging these ion beams with conventional accelerator technology and exploring the possibilities of future applications. We report about the goals and first results of the LIGHT collaboration to generate, handle and transport laser driven ion beams. This effort constitutes an important step in research for next generation accelerator technologies.

Since the mid-1950s, pulsed (iron-free) high-field magnets have become a common, versatile research tool. Applications in solid state physics have promoted the development of sophisticated magnets that nowadays can achieve fields above 90 T repeatedly. We report here another area of application for pulsed power magnet technology in combination with high-intensity lasers; namely the use of pulsed magnets as research tools in laser-based laboratory astrophysics and as effective optical devices for laser-accelerated particle beams. Pulsed power solenoids for focusing of laser-accelerated particle beams might allow for the use of these new radiation qualities in medical radiation therapy or could function as a crucial part of a compact, laser-based ion source. The talk gives a survey of developments at Helmholtz-Zentrum Dresden-Rossendorf in portable pulse generator technology and pulsed high-field magnets, especially designed to match the requirements of different laser-plasma physics environments. The beam optical properties of a capacitor-driven air core solenoid are derived from experimental data and most recent experimental results collected within the LIGHT collaboration at the PHELIX laser system at GSI, Darmstadt are presented.

A Reply to the Comment by C. Thaury et al.

Plasma heating and ionization are important processes during the interaction of high power ultra-short laser pulses with solid density targets. In order to understand the relevant physics, particle-in-cell simulations including collisions and ionization were run to study ion heating dynamics in buried layer targets illuminated by high-intensity, ultra-short laser pulses. Our results show that bulk ions can be heated to above 1keV temperature. When studying the ionization dynamics strong filaments have been observed which depend on preplasma on the target front side, laser pulse duration and intensity. In order to study the evolution of ionization and ion bulk heating in experiment, ultra-bright X-ray free electron lasers - such as the European XFEL - are a very promising and strong tool to resolve the spatial and temporal scales of these processes inside the solid target.

Recent theoretical results have led to a new understanding of how to derive the temperature of hot electrons generated in laser-solid interactions from the laser intensity. We present new scaling laws for electron temperature with laser intensity. We then focus on the implications of our findings for applications such as laser-driven ion acceleration and laser-driven fusion using buried-layer targets.

In 2009, at the LANL Trident laser facility a new world record in laser accelerated proton energy has been set, exceeding 65 MeV, using hollow conical targets. We performed 2D collissional PIC simulations and identify two novel electron acceleration mechanisms that have not been considered before to enhance ion acceleration: the direct acceleration of electrons comoving with the driving laser along the the cone-wall inner surface (DASE) and the acceleration of electrons in surface plasma waves (PWA). We nd that they are responsible for a signicant increase in both electron number and energy in the case of a grazing laser incidence onto the inner cone wall surface compared to regular flat foils. We study the scaling of the electron and ion energies for various target and laser parameters.

High-Energy, short-pulse lasers can be used to accelerate ion beams. Laser-driven acceleration promises to provide very compact ion sources suitable for a variety of applications such as ion beam tumor therapy. Up until recently, however, the ion energies observed in experiments were too low to be useful for treating tumors. Using a novel target design, we have broken a long-lasting record for maximum proton energy measured in a laser acceleration experiment, reaching for the first time proton energies suitable for radiation therapy of intraocular tumors. We present realistic particle-in-cell simulations of the laser interacting with the target that can explain the increase in energy seen in our experiment. The results from these simulations will help to improve the target design, paving the way towards even higher proton energies.

In this work we report on a recent experiment where an energetic, well-collimated electron beam has been observed in the laser direction following the short pulse (600 fs) high-intensity laser interaction with ultra-thin solid foils. These results are in contrast to the typical low-energy divergent electrons accompanying ions in the target normal direction usually seen in solid targets.We observe the foils being preheated and expanded by ASE prior to the main pulse which makes them transparent for the laser. The experimental evidence as well as 2D particle-in-cell simulations suggest the excitation of a wakefield that can accelerate electrons to energies of tens of MeV.

We present the main features of PIConGPU, the - to our knowledge - first scalable particle-in-cell (PIC) code for relativistic laser plasma interactions written for graphical processing units (GPUs). We show that it is possible to use PIConGPU on standard compute clusters equipped with GPUs and introduce the main features that are important to reach good weak scaling when increasing both the size of the system simulated and the number of GPUs.

Laser-plasma accelerated ion and electron beam sources are an emerging field with vast prospects, and promise many superior applications in a variety of fields such as hadron cancer therapy, compact radioisotope generation, table-top nuclear physics, laboratory astrophysics, nuclear forensics, waste transmutation, Special Nuclear Material (SNM) detection, and inertial fusion energy. LANL is engaged in several projects seeking to develop compact high-current and high-energy ion and electron sources. We are especially interested in two specific applications: ion fast ignition/capsule perturbation and radiation oncology. Laser-to-beam conversion efficiencies of over 10% are needed for practical applications, and we have already shown inherent efficiencies of >5% from flat foils, on Trident using only a 5th of the intensity [1] and energy of the Nova Petawatt laser [2]. With clever target designs, like structured curved cone targets, we have also been able to achieve major ion energy gains, leading to the highest energy laser-accelerated proton beams in the world [3]. These new target designs promise to help usher in the next generation of particle sources realizing the potential of laser-accelerated beams.

Finite bandwidth x-ray pulses generated in the interaction of a bunch of relativistic electrons with a high-intensity, ultra-short laser pulse are interesting for a variety of experiments that do not require the very small bandwidth delivered by x-ray free electron lasers. We present a new scheme for Thomson scattering in which we use a grating setup similar to that found in a grating compressor as used in high-power short-pulse laser systems. The gratings are used to introduce a tilt of the laser pulse front and to compensate for dispersion and other unwanted effects on the laser pulse interacting with the electrons. Electron and laser beam are brought in overlap in a side scattering geometry for which the laser pulse is elongated in one spatial direction using an elliptical mirror so that the region of overlap between laser pulse and electron bunch is greatly increased compared to a simple head-on scenario for Thomson scattering.. This increase in size allows to increase the laser pulse energy while keeping the local intensity of the light seen by the electrons low, thus effectively increasing the number of scattered photons by up to three orders of magnitude. By increasing the length of the overlap region one can decrease the bandwidth of the scattered x-ray photons for a given laser pulse energy, while changing the pulse front tilt angle allows to vary the wavelength of the x-ray photons without changing the electron beam energy.

Weltrekord in Protonenbeschleunigung mit Licht: Schnelle Protonen sind zum Beispiel für die Krebstherapie notwendig. Nicht immer kann man dabei an große Beschleunigeranlagen gehen. Forschern gelingt nun neue Bestmarke bei der Laser-Beschleunigung dieser Teilchen. In der Bestrahlungstherapie von Tumoren spielen schnelle Teilchen eine wichtige Rolle. So können Strahlen schneller Protonen genutzt werden um Augenkrebs zu bekämpfen. Die Erzeugung solcher hochenergetischer Partikelstrahlen ist jedoch nicht nur in großen Beschleunigeranlagen möglich. Man kann auch Laserlicht nutzen um Protonen und andere geladene Teilchen extrem zu beschleunigen. Dazu wird die Wechselwirkung des Lasers mit einem Materietarget, also einem materiellen Zielobjekt, genutzt. Dabei werden mikroskopischen Längenskalen sehr große Feldstärken erzeugt. In einem kürzlich vorgestellten Versuch wurde ein neuer Rekordwert für diese Art von Teilchenbeschleunigung erzielt. Einem Forscherteam, an dem mehrere US-amerikanische Universitäten und Forschungseinrichtungen und das Forschungszentrum Dresden-Rossendorf (FZD) beteiligt sind, gelang es, einen Protonenstrahl mit einer Energie von 67 MeV (Megaelektronvolt) zu erzeugen. Das entspricht der Energie, die ein Elektron oder ein Proton aufnähme, würde es mit einer Spannung von 67 Millionen Volt beschleunigt. Zum Vergleich: An Synchrotron-Beschleunigern wie etwa dam BESSY in Berlin oder PETRA III in Hamburg werden Energien erreicht, die etwa hundert bis tausend mal so groß sind. Möglich wird die Teilchenbeschleunigung mit Licht durch die hohe Energiedichte moderner Hochleistungs-Kurzpuls-Laser. Trifft ein Puls aus einer solchen Quelle auf Materie, werden die Elektronen derartig stark beschleunigt, dass sie sich von ihren Atomrümpfen lösen. Ein Plasma entsteht. Die endliche Ausdehnung des Lichtpulses sorgt nun dafür, dass die Elektronen nicht nur quer zur Ausbreitungsrichtung des Lasers beschleunigt werden, wie man das auch bei weniger intensivem Licht beobachtet. Statt dessen tritt, nach dem der Puls durch die Materie gewandert ist, eine Plasmawelle aus zurückschwingenden Elektronen auf, die auch eine Komponente in Laserausbreitungsrichtung enthält.

Fast ignition fusion requires transporting a large amount of energy into the compressed ICF capsule in a short period of time. One metthod for efficiently transporting laser energy into a compressed fusion capsule is to use a cone situated near or in the capsule, decreasing the distance to the core, improing laser conversion efficiency and concentrating charged particle flow. Results from recent experiments performed at the LANL 200 TW Trident short-pulse laser at ~1020 W/cm² (80-100 J and ~600 fs) are presented.

Accelerating Plasma Simulations using novel computing hardware is a promising way towards a cost-efficient decrease of the runtime of realistic plasma simulations. We present a new particle-in-cell algorithm for simulating laser plasma acceleration of particles which has been developed to run on a NVIDIA GPU system. Using a sliding-window technique we are able to run large-scale 2D simulations of laser wakefield acceleration. We present the algorithm in detail and show that it is easy to extend to 3D geometries. We will conclude by discussing both obstacles and promises encountered when porting the algorithm to a standard CPU-based Linux cluster in which each node is equipped with one or more GPUs.

Recent advances in laser-ion acceleration have motivated research towards laser-driven compact accelerators for medical therapy. Realizing laser-ion acceleration for medical therapy will require adapting the medical requirements to the foreseeable laser constraints, as well as advances in laser-acceleration physics, beam manipulation and delivery, real-time dosimetry, treatment planning and translational research into a clinical setting.

For the past ten years, the highest proton energies accelerated with high-intensity lasers was 58 MeV, observed in 2000 at the LLNL NOVA Petawatt laser, using flat foil targets. Recently, 67.5 MeV protons were observed in experiments at the Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL) Trident laser, using one-fifth of the PW laser pulse energy, incident into novel conical targets. We present a focused study of new theoretical understanding of this measured enhancement from collisional Particle-in-Cell simulations, which shows that the hot electron temperature, number and maximum energy, responsible for the Target Normal Sheath Acceleration (TNSA) at the cone-top, are significantly increased when the laser grazes the cone wall. This is mainly due to the extraction of electrons from the cone wall by the laser electric field, and their boost in the forward direction by the v×B term of the Lorentz force. This result is in contrast to previous predictions of optical collection and wall-guiding of electrons in angled cones. This new wall-grazing mechanism offers the prospect to linearly increase the hot electron temperature, and thereby the TNSA proton energy, by extending the length over which the laser interacts in a grazing fashion in suitably optimized targets. This may allow achieving much higher proton energies for interesting future applications, with smaller, lower energy laser systems that allow for a high repetition rate.

Journal of synchrotron radiation 28(5), 28 (2021). doi:10.1107/S1600577521007335, The European XFEL delivers up to 27000 intense (>1012 photons) pulses per second, of ultrashort (≤50 fs) and transversely coherent X-ray radiation, at a maximum repetition rate of 4.5 MHz. Its unique X-ray beam parameters enable groundbreaking experiments in matter at extreme conditions at the High Energy Density (HED) scientific instrument. The performance of the HED instrument during its first two years of operation, its scientific remit, as well as ongoing installations towards full operation are presented. Scientific goals of HED include the investigation of extreme states of matter created by intense laser pulses, diamond anvil cells, or pulsed magnets, and ultrafast X-ray methods that allow their diagnosis using self-amplified spontaneous emission between 5 and 25 keV, coupled with X-ray monochromators and optional seeded beam operation. The HED instrument provides two target chambers, X-ray spectrometers for emission and scattering, X-ray detectors, and a timing tool to correct for residual timing jitter between laser and X-ray pulses., Published by Wiley-Blackwell, [S.l.]

High power laser science and engineering 8, e22 (2020). doi:10.1017/hpl.2020.13, Published by Cambridge Univ. Press, Cambridge