Analytical estimates of proton acceleration in laser-produced turbulent plasmas

Research output: Contribution to journalJournal articlepeer-review

  • Konstantin Beyer
  • Brian Reville
  • Archie Bott
  • Hye-Sook Park
  • Subir Sarkar
  • Gianluca Gregori
With the advent of high power lasers, new opportunities have opened up for simulating astrophysical processes in the laboratory. We show that 2nd-order Fermi acceleration can be directly investigated at the National Ignition Facility, Livermore. This requires measuring the momentum-space diffusion of 3 MeV protons produced within a turbulent plasma generated by a laser. Treating Fermi acceleration as a biased diffusion process, we show analytically that a measurable broadening of the initial proton distribution is then expected for particles exiting the plasma.
Original languageEnglish
Article number905840608
JournalJournal of Plasma Physics
Volume84
Issue number6
Number of pages12
ISSN0022-3778
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - 19 Nov 2018

Bibliographical note

7 pages, 6 figures

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