Experimental setup for interaction between highly charged ions and laser-produced plasma near Bohr velocity energy region

Abstract

Ion energy loss in the interaction between highly charged ions and dense plasma near Bohr velocity energy region is one of the important physical problems in the field of high-energy density physics driven by intense heavy ion beams. Based on the 320 kV experimental platform at the Institute of Modern Physics, Chinese Academy of Sciences, a new experimental setup was built for the research of interaction between ions and laser-produced plasma near the Bohr velocity, where the ion energy loss and charge state distribution can be experimentally investigated. In this paper we introduce the new setup in detail, including the generation and controlling of pulsed ion beam ( ≥ 200 ns); the preparation of high-density laser plasma target (10¹⁷—10²¹ cm^–3); the diagnostics of plasma and the developed high energy resolution ion measurement system (< 1%). In the experiment, the charge distribution of Xe¹⁵⁺ ions with 4 MeV penetrating through the laser-produced Al plasma target is measured. The charge-state analysis device observes different results without and with the plasma, in which the outgoing Xe ion charge-state changes correspondingly from the 15+ to 10+, thus the electron capture process is believed to be dominant. In addition, the proton energy loss is also measured by using the magnetic spectrometer, showing that the experimental energy loss is about 2.0 keV, 30% higher than those theoretical predictions , which can be attributed to the fact that in the near Bohr velocity energy regime, the first-order Born approximation condition is not valid, thus the Bethe model and SSM model are inapplicable to the experimental results. In future, a systematic study will be performed based on our ions-plasma ineteraction setup, and the energy loss and charge state data will be introduced.