Herbie Smith, UT-Austin

"Enhancement of Proton Acceleration from Focusing Targets"

Abstract: Particle acceleration from laser-plasma interactions has been a vibrant area of research since the discovery of electron and proton beams emitted from high intensity laser-plasma interactions in the 1980s. Since then, a large body of work has developed in pursuit of understanding and controlling the mechanisms that generate these particle beams, as well as the beams themselves. In particular, proton beams have a rich set of applications in the fields of medicine, fusion energy, and fundamental physics that motivates their study. In this talk, I will discuss the design and development of a 100 TW power upgrade to the graduate student-run GHOST laser system for the purposes of conducting repetition-rated laser-plasma experiments. I will then discuss experiments conducted on the Texas Petawatt Laser system to test an approach to enhance the peak energy and temperature of proton beams generated by laser-plasma interactions using compound parabolic focusing targets.