The development of laser plasma accelerators has been centred around the optimisation of particle yield resulting from the interaction of high energy, single-shot lasers with very low average power. Here we aim at the already existing, high average power lasers with kHz repetition rate but low pulse energy. In our experiment, the SEA laser of ELI-ALPS provided ultrahigh contrast laser pulses of 12fs pulse duration and 20mJ energy on the 200 nm thick dPE foils. A rotating wheel target system allowed the laser interaction run at 1 Hz repetition rate in bursts of 75 shots. The accelerated deuterons, measured by Thomson spectrometers for each shot, hit a 0.1mm thick, 20 mm diameter deuterated-polyethylene disk. Neutrons were then generated via d+d fusion reaction with a mean energy of 2.45MeV. The neutron events were detected by four plastic scintillators at various angles around the chamber. From the ToF distributions we have concluded that an average of >3000 neutrons were generated in a shot, with a slight anisotropy to the forward direction. The upcoming development of kHz repetition-rate primary-target systems would boost the yield of neutrons in a second, that may exceed which can be achieved with PW class lasers..
Development of laser-plasma X-ray sources provides a new route to high brightness and small source size somewhere in the middle of low cost micro-focus X-rays and large scale synchrotron facilities. We explore one application of this new type of sources with emphasis on the stability of the source at high repetition rate and the advantage over similar conventional sources. In this paper we report the development and application of a micro-focus X-ray source for phase contrast imaging. The X-ray source produced at the Laser Laboratory for Acceleration and Applications (L2A2) of the University of Santiago de Compostela (USC), is made by focusing a 1 mJ, 35 fs, 1kHz pulses at 800 nm wavelength on metallic plates close to the diffraction limit. The X-ray spectra of this source are characterized by the K-α peaks which can be 'tuned' by changing the target material and a Bremsstrahlung continuum up to several tens of keV. The stability of the source is achieved by optimizing the positioning system of the metallic target which refresh and keep the surface within the small the Rayleigh length allowing the development of applications.
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