Laser Plasma-Accelerated Ultra-Intense Electron Beam for Efficiently Exciting Nuclear Isomers

Abstract

Utilizing a laser plasma wakefield to accelerate ultrahigh charge and current electron beams is critical for many pioneering applications, for example, to efficiently produce nuclear isomers with short lifetimes that may be widely used. However, because of the beam loading effect, the electron charge in a single plasma bubble is limited to hundreds of picocoulombs. Herein, via a tightly focused intense laser pulse self-guiding in dense gas, a twenty-nanocoulomb, tens-of-MeV, hundred-kiloampere collimated electron beam is produced from a chain of plasma bubbles in the saturated injection regime. This intense electron beam is utilized to excite indium nuclear isomers with an ultrahigh peak rate of (Formula presented.) particles·s-1 via photonuclear reaction. This efficient isomer production method can be widely used for pumping isotopes with excited state lifetimes on the picosecond scale, which is beneficial for deeply understanding nuclear transition mechanisms or stimulating γ-ray lasers.