Quantitative Shape-Classification of Misfitting Precipitates during Cubic to Tetragonal Transformations: Phase-Field Simulations and Experiments

The effectiveness of the mechanism of precipitation strengthening in metallic alloys de-pends on the shapes of the precipitates. Two different material systems are considered: tetragonal γ′′ precipitates in Ni-based alloys and tetragonal θ′ precipitates in Al-Cu-alloys. The shape formation and evolution of the tetragonally misfitting precipitates was investigated by means of experiments and phase-field simulations. We employed the method of invariant moments for the consistent shape quantification of precipitates obtained from the simulation as well as those obtained from the experiment. Two well-defined shape-quantities are proposed: (i) a generalized measure for the particles aspect ratio and (ii) the normalized λ2, as a measure for shape deviations from an ideal ellipse of the given aspect ratio. Considering the size dependence of the aspect ratio of γ′′ precipitates, we find good agreement between the simulation results and the experiment. Further, the precipitates’ in-plane shape is defined as the central 2D cut through the 3D particle in a plane normal to the tetragonal c-axes of the precipitate. The experimentally observed in-plane shapes of γ′′-precipitates can be quantitatively reproduced by the phase-field model. © 2021 by the authors. Licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland

Evolution of the electric fields induced in high intensity laser-matter interactions

Multi MeV protons \cite{snavely2000intense} and heavier ions are emitted by thin foils irradiated by high-intensity lasers, due to the huge accelerating fields, up to several teraelectronvolt per meter, at sub-picosecond timescale \cite{dubois2014target}. The evolution of these huge fields is not well understood till today. Here we report, for the first time, direct and temporally resolved measurements of the electric fields produced by the interaction of a short-pulse high-intensity laser with solid targets. The results, obtained with a sub-$100$ fs temporal diagnostics, show that such fields build-up in few hundreds of femtoseconds and lasts after several picoseconds

Recent studies on single-shot diagnostics for plasma accelerators at SPARC_LAB

Plasma wakefield acceleration is the most promising acceleration technique for compact and cheap accelerators, thanks to the high accelerating gradients achievable. Nevertheless, this approach still suffers of shot-to-shot instabilities, mostly related to experimental parameters fluctuations. Therefore, the use of single shot diagnostics is needed to properly understand the acceleration mechanism. In this work, we present two diagnostics to probe electron beams from laser-plasma interactions, one relying on Electro Optical Sampling (EOS) for laser-solid matter interactions, the other one based on Optical Transition Radiation (OTR) for single shot measurements of the transverse emittance of plasma accelerated electron beams, both developed at the SPARC_LAB Test Facility