Coulomb explosions of deuterium clusters studied by compact design of Nomarski interferometer

Abstract

Interactions of high-intensity femtosecond lasers with deuterium clusters leading to Coulombic explosions and subsequent production of fusion neutrons attracted in recent years considerable attention. In order to maximize the neutron yield finding a dependence of clusters size and their spatial distribution on experimental conditions became very important. In this paper a possibility to measure the deuterium clusters spatial distributions experimentally was analyzed. In combination with experiments recently performed in the Laboratory of Quantum Optics at the Korea Atomic Energy Research Institute (KAERI) interferometry was identified as the diagnostics suitable for such measurements. © 2010 IOP Publishing Ltd.