Use of imaging plates at near saturation for high energy density particles

Copyright 2008 American Institute of Physics. This article may be downloaded for personal use only. Any other use requires prior permission of the author and the American Institute of Physics. The following article appeared in Review of Scientific Instruments, 79(10), 10E910, 2008 and may be found at http://dx.doi.org/10.1063/1.298767

Relativistic plasma shutter for ultraintense laser pulses

A relativistic plasma shutter technique is proposed and tested to remove the sub-100 ps pedestal of a high-intensity laser pulse. The shutter is an ultrathin foil placed before the target of interest. As the leading edge of the laser ionizes the shutter material it will expand into a relativistically underdense plasma allowing for the peak pulse to propagate through while rejecting the low intensity pedestal. An increase in the laser temporal contrast is demonstrated by measuring characteristic signatures in the accelerated proton spectra and directionality from the interaction of 30 TW pulses with ultrathin foils along with supporting hydrodynamic and particle-in-cell simulations