Analytical estimates of proton acceleration in laser-produced turbulent plasmas

TY - JOUR

T1 - Analytical estimates of proton acceleration in laser-produced turbulent plasmas

AU - Beyer, Konstantin

AU - Reville, Brian

AU - Bott, Archie

AU - Park, Hye-Sook

AU - Sarkar, Subir

AU - Gregori, Gianluca

N1 - 7 pages, 6 figures

PY - 2018/12/1

Y1 - 2018/12/1

N2 - With the advent of high power lasers, new opportunities have opened up for simulating astrophysical processes in the laboratory. We show that second-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.

AB - With the advent of high power lasers, new opportunities have opened up for simulating astrophysical processes in the laboratory. We show that second-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.

KW - astro-ph.HE

KW - physics.plasm-ph

U2 - 10.1017/s0022377818001149

DO - 10.1017/s0022377818001149

M3 - Journal article

SN - 0022-3778

VL - 84

JO - Journal of Plasma Physics

JF - Journal of Plasma Physics

IS - 6

M1 - 905840608

ER -