Accumulated laser-photoneutron generation

Itamar Cohen; Tamir Cohen; Aviv Levinson; Michael Elkind; Yonatan Rakovsky; Assaf Levanon; David Michaeli; Erez Cohen; Arie Beck; Ishay Pomerantz

doi:10.1140/epjp/s13360-024-05387-6

2024 Impact factor 2.9

EPJ PLUS - Condensed Matter and Complex Systems

Focus Point on Laser Driven Neutron Sources and their Applications

Open Access

Eur. Phys. J. Plus (2024) 139: 585
https://doi.org/10.1140/epjp/s13360-024-05387-6

Regular Article

Accumulated laser-photoneutron generation

Itamar Cohen¹^,2, Tamir Cohen¹^,2^,3, Aviv Levinson¹^,2, Michael Elkind¹^,2, Yonatan Rakovsky¹, Assaf Levanon¹^,2, David Michaeli⁴, Erez Cohen⁴, Arie Beck⁴ and Ishay Pomerantz¹^,2^k

¹ The School of Physics and Astronomy, Tel Aviv University, 6997801, Tel Aviv, Israel
² The Center for Light-Matter Interaction, Tel Aviv University, 6997801, Tel Aviv, Israel
³ Department of Applied Physics, Soreq Nuclear Research Center, 81800, Yavne, Israel
⁴ Physics Department, Nuclear Research Center - Negev, 84190, Beer-Sheva, Israel

^k ipom@tauex.tau.ac.il

Received: 14 November 2023
Accepted: 22 June 2024
Published online: 5 July 2024

Abstract

We present repeated generation of photoneutrons by double-pulse irradiation of ultrathin foils. A ~ mJ prepulse turns a foil into a 100-μm scale plasma plume from which a beam of MeV electrons is generated by the main pulse. Neutrons are generated in a secondary metal target placed downstream to the electron beam. We utilize an automated target system capable of delivering ultrathin foils to the laser focus at an average rate of 0.1 Hz. With 153 consecutive laser shots taken over the course of 24 min, we generated a total 2.6 × 10⁷ neutrons. We present a method for evaluating how the number of photoneutrons scales with the laser intensity in this experimental scenario, which we validate against the measured yields.

© The Author(s) 2024

Open Access This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons licence, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article's Creative Commons licence, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article's Creative Commons licence and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this licence, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/.