Production of strongly coupled plasmas by the laser irradiation of thin metallic films confined within micrometer-scale gaps by transparent insulators

Publisher Website
Google Scholar
Abstract
A method of producing strongly coupled plasmas by the laser irradiation of thin metallic foils is described. The foils are deposited on the inside surfaces of two crystals placed parallel, and spaced by a few-micrometer gap. Laser irradiation of the foils through the transparent confining walls creates a plasma with a Coulomb interaction potential similar in magnitude to the kinetic energy. Use of X-cut quartz as the confining material allows direct measurement of the plasma pressure. The lifetime of the plasma is typically more than an order of magnitude longer than the laser pulse for incident pulses of nanosecond duration. The target design appears promising for the measurement of several plasma characteristics such as the equation of state, Coulomb logarithms, and transport coefficients, and the resultant plasma conditions compare favorably with those produced by methods based on x-ray heating of confined metallic foils requiring laser energies that are larger by several orders of magnitude.