Nuclear physics using ultrafast high-power laser ion acceleration

Ultrafast high-power lasers provide a new tool for the study of nuclear science, producing large numbers of energetic ions in a single burst, allowing activation measurements that would be difficult using traditional accelerator techniques. The Short-Lived Isotope Counting System (SLICS) has been developed to detect the 20 ms to 10 s half life beta decays of reaction products formed as a result of light-ion reactions initiated by laser-ion acceleration or inertial confinement fusion (ICF). Results of a recent SLICS test using the Multi-Terawatt Laser (MTW) at the Laboratory for Laser Energetics (LLE) will be presented. In the experiment, target normal sheath acceleration (TNSA) was used to produce a pulse of roughly 0.1-10 MeV deuterons which struck a thin natural Li target film, causing the⁷Li(d,p)⁸Li reaction. SLICS counted beta decays of the ⁸Li, beginning a few milliseconds after the laser shot, allowing a fit to the 840 ms half-life decay to be used to determine the ⁸Li yield, which was compared to the yield predicted from previously published cross section measurements. Work is currently underway to test and field SLICS as a TIM-based diagnostic.