Laser driven radiography

Abstract

Summary form only given, as follows. When a high power laser is focused onto a solid or gaseous target at very high intensities the electron's motion in the electric field of the laser becomes relativistic and MeV electrons and ions are observed both from interactions with gaseous and solid targets. The most powerful lasers have been able to focus the laser light to intensities in excess of 10/sup 20/ WCM/sup -2/ with pulses containing up to several hundred Joules of laser radiation on target. Experiments investigating short pulse length, high intensity laser beams on the Vulcan Laser at the Rutherford Appleton Laboratory have yielded significant X-ray doses which are in the energy regime of interest to the flash radiography community at AWE. Such laser driven X-ray sources have specific applications to the radiographing of very high velocity, high line of site mass, high atomic number materials (core punching). The advantages of laser sources are their small X-ray source size, typically 10's of microns compared with conventional flash X-ray source sizes of millimeters. These series of experiments, conducted at the Rutherford Appleton Laboratories, measured the magnitude and spectral content of the radiation flux output from the Vulcan laser. We will also show how such a Laser driven X-ray source could be applied to core punching.