Abstract
Laser-driven radiation sources are attracting increasing attention for several materials science applications. While laser-driven ions, electrons and neutrons have already been considered to carry out the elemental characterization of materials, the possibility to exploit high-energy photons remains unexplored. Indeed, the electrons generated by the interaction of an ultra-intense laser pulse with a near-critical material can be turned into high-energy photons via bremsstrahlung emission when shot into a high-Z converter. These photons could be effectively exploited to perform Photon Activation Analysis (PAA). In the present work, laser-driven PAA is proposed and investigated. We develop a theoretical approach to identify the optimal experimental conditions for laser-driven PAA in a wide range of laser intensities. Lastly, exploiting the Monte Carlo and Particle-In-Cell tools, we successfully simulate PAA experiments performed with both conventional accelerators and laser-driven sources. Under high repetition rate operation (i.e. 1−10 Hz) conditions, the ultra-intense lasers can allow performing PAA with performances comparable with those achieved with conventional accelerators. Moreover, laser-driven PAA could be exploited jointly with complementary laser-driven materials characterization techniques under investigation in existing laser facilities.
Highlights
Laser-driven radiation sources are attracting increasing attention for several materials science applications
While ion beam analysis (IBA), secondary ion mass spectrometry (SIMS), and energy-dispersive X-ray (EDX) are suitable for the characterization of the material surface, Photon Activation Analysis (PAA) allows probing the bulk composition of large samples (100s of grams or more)
The models have to take into account the optimal converter thickness
Summary
Laser-driven radiation sources are attracting increasing attention for several materials science applications. The possibility of performing PAA with photons generated from laser-driven electrons has not been considered yet. This was achieved by exploiting Fluka[50] MC simulations and a proper theoretical description of laser-driven electrons acceleration in near-critical density media[51].
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