p$^{11}$B nuclear reactions initiated by laser-accelerated intense proton beam in boron plasma

The study of nuclear reaction in plasma environment is of great importance for fusion sciences and astrophysics. The advent of high-intensity-pulsed laser technology enables in laboratory generating  extreme states of matter and producing high-current(10$^{10}$ A/cm$^{2}$ ), short-pulse(∼ps) ion beams. These advantages provide great experimental opportunities to explore the nuclear reaction dynamics at extreme condition, in which case nonlinear effects are expected to occur. Here we report the measurements of proton-boron reaction induced by laser-accelerated intense proton beam in boron plasma target using XGIII laser facility.

The experimental setup was shown in Fig. 1. The dense plasma was generated by irradiating a boron-doped CHO foam sample with soft X rays from a ns laser-heated hohlraum. The energy loss of the protons, which is supposed to play important roles in nuclear reaction dynamics was measured simultaneously.

It was preliminarily found that the α yield initiated in plasma is generally higher than that in the cold foam. The enhancement of proton number by 2-3 order of magnitude induce 4-5 orders of magnitude enhancement of alpha particle yield for cold target. The preliminary analysis shows that the nonlinear gain of this hydrogen-boron fusion reaction may be related to the super-strong local electric field and the local extreme non-equilibrium state caused by the high-current ion beam in the dense ionized matter.

Fig. 1 Experimental Setup

Zoom-Meeting
https://gsi-fair.zoom.us/j/96629963798

Meeting-ID: 966 2996 3798
Kenncode: 130302