AAC2024 will be held at the Big Sky Resort in Big Sky, Montana, on Sunday, June 9th – Friday, June 14th, 2024.

The 50th Conference of Plasma Physics will be organized in Salamanca, Spain, from 8 to 12 July 2024

Post-acceleration of protons in helical coil (HC) targets driven by intense, ultrashort laser pulses can enhance ion energy. This scheme realizes the post-focusing and acceleration of protons, which has attracted widespread attention. Due to the challenges in maintaining synchronous acceleration, however, the current reported experimental energy gain is generally low and still cannot meet the requirements for medical applications. The research challenge lies in how to ensure stable post-acceleration of protons in HC.

Diagnosing the evolution of laser-generated High Energy Density (HED) systems is fundamental to developing a correct understanding of the behavior of matter under extreme conditions. Interferometry methods are a very powerful tool for diagnosing these systems, as they can provide valuable information about the plasma electron and ion density in a simple manner. However, current diagnostic methods mostly rely on visible radiation and thus, HED plasma probing is difficult since these plasmas are mostly opaque to visible wavelengths. Considering this, Talbot-Lau grating interferometry is a promising approach to diagnosing HED systems as it extends interferometry methods to the X-ray regime. In recent years, with the aim of imaging dense plasmas, there have been several efforts to adapt Talbot-Lau interferometry to high power laser facilities such as PALS, the Multi-TeraWatt (MTW) facility and OMEGA EP, as well as proof-of-concepts experiments at lower energy high-repetition rate lasers. A schematic drawing of a Talbot-Lau interferometer and its different components is shown in Figure 1.