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APS » Journals » Phys. Rev. Lett. » Volume 84 » Issue 5
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Phys. Rev. Lett. 84, 903–906 (2000)

Photonuclear Fission from High Energy Electrons from Ultraintense Laser-Solid Interactions

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T. E. Cowan1, A. W. Hunt5, T. W. Phillips1, S. C. Wilks1, M. D. Perry1, C. Brown1, W. Fountain3, S. Hatchett1, J. Johnson4, M. H. Key1, T. Parnell3, D. M. Pennington1, R. A. Snavely1, and Y. Takahashi2
1University of California, Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, Livermore, California 94550
2University of Alabama, Huntsville, Alabama 35899
3George C. Marshall Space Flight Center, Huntsville, Alabama 35812
4Universities Space Research Association, Huntsville, Alabama 35806
5Harvard University, Cambridge, Massachusetts 02138

Received 23 March 1999; published in the issue dated 31 January 2000

See accompanying Physics Focus

A new regime of laser-matter interactions in which the quiver motion of plasma electrons is fully relativistic, with energies extending well above the threshold for nuclear processes, is studied using a petawatt laser system. In solid target experiments with focused intensities exceeding 1020W/cm2, high energy electron generation, hard bremsstrahlung, and nuclear phenomena have been observed. We report here a quantitative comparison of the high energy electrons and the bremsstrahlung spectrum, as measured by photonuclear reaction yields, including the photoinduced fission of 238U.

© 2000 The American Physical Society

URL:
http://link.aps.org/doi/10.1103/PhysRevLett.84.903
DOI:
10.1103/PhysRevLett.84.903
PACS:
52.40.Nk, 25.20.-x, 25.85.Jg, 52.60.+h
 
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