Deuteron acceleration in nanowire arrays irradiated at highly relativistic intensities

The irradiation of arrays of aligned deuterated polyethylene nanowires (CD₂) with ultra-high contrast femtosecond laser pulses of relativistic intensity was recently shown to accelerate deuterons to multi-MeV energy and to efficiently produce quasi-monoenergetic fusion neutrons [1]. The number of fusion neutron produced exceeds by > 500 times that produced by irradiating flat solid CD₂ targets under the same conditions. Those experiments were conducted at irradiation intensities below 1 x 10 ²⁰ W cm^-2 .

Here we present the first results of deuteron acceleration from nanowire experiments conducted at irradiation intensities of ~ 2x10²¹ W cm^-2_. The deuterons are measured to be accelerated to energies of several tens of MeVs and to be emitted in a cone of approximately 10 degrees half-angle. 3-D fully relativistic particle in cell computations are used to elucidate the mechanisms of ions acceleration in the nanowire arrays.

1. Alden Curtis, C. Calvi, J. Tinsley, R. Hollinger, V. Kaymak, A. Pukhov, S. Wang, A. Rockwood, Y. Wang, V.N. Shlyaptsev, J.J. Rocca, “Micro-Scale Fusion in Dense Relativistic Nanowire Array Plasmas”, Nat. Commun. 9, 1077 (2018)