XingGuang III laser facility and its experimental ability to drive high-energy particle beams

Abstract

The XingGuang III (XGIII) laser facility at the Science and Technology on Plasma Physics Laboratory at the Laser Fusion Research Center is unique in the world and consists of one 0.7 PW picosecond beam, one 0.6 PW femtosecond beam and one 1 kJ nanosecond laser beam. The three laser beams with different wavelengths and durations can converge in the target chamber with high spatial and temporal synchronization. Because of its smart beam configurations, XGIII providesunique opportunities for multi-beam pump–probe experiments in research fields such as high-energy density physics, plasma physics and laboratory astrophysics. Laser-driven high-energy particle beams were experimentally investigated, and found to play an important role in pump–probe schemes. High-energy electrons, protons, positrons and their experimental scalings were obtained using the picosecond laser beam with an intensity of 1019 W cm−2. A two-beam pump–probe experiment was demonstrated in which the plasma channel of the femtosecond laser pulse propagating in underdense plasma was imaged by a proton beam driven by the picosecond laser. Furthermore, a three-dimensional reconstruction of the plasma structure may be achieved in multi-beam pump–probe experiments with XGIII.