Description
The novel X-ray source driven by high-power lasers at ELI Gammatron Beamline is of high interest for time-resolved pump-probe experiments of X-ray imaging, diffraction, and spectroscopy in a wide area of applications of physics, material science, and biochemistry and can serve as a key diagnostic tool for probing warm dense matter (WDM) and multi-Petawatt-class laser matter interactions in high-energy density (HED) plasma.
To improve the conversion efficiency, increase the critical energy and brightness of secondary radiation, an independent optimisation of electron acceleration, passive plasma lensing, and X-ray radiation from multistage gas targets is carried out. Using Particle-in-Cell simulation the tailored plasma profiles are tuned to accelerate a bunch of electrons with a charge of hundreds of pico-coulombs to GeV energies and to collimate it using a passive plasma lensing. Afterwards the insertion of the electron beam in to the high-density plasma region is optimised using radiation codes for the best conversion efficiency of secondary radiation. ANSYS Fluent simulation is implemented to design the array of symmetrical and unsymmetrical supersonic nozzles to form the gas density profiles corresponding to the optimised multistage plasma targets.
The designed nozzle arrays are manufactured using hybrid 3D laser machining technology from fused silica and will be tested at ELI L3 HAPLS laser, diode-pumped Ti: Sapphire Petawatt-class laser system, delivering pulses with over 10 J energy, 30 fs duration, and 800 nm central wavelength, operating at a repetition rate of 3.3 Hz at ELI Gammatron beamline.
