Eur. Phys. J. D 55, 293-297 (2009)
https://doi.org/10.1140/epjd/e2009-00079-7

Observation of the transient charging of a laser-irradiated solid

¹ Department of Physics and Astronomy, Queen's University Belfast, Belfast, BT7 1NN, UK
² Institut für Laser-und Plasmaphysik, Heinrich-Heine-Universität, 40225 Düsseldorf, Germany
³ Laboratoire pour l'Utilisation des Lasers Intenses, École Polytechnique, 91128 Palaiseau, France
⁴ SUPA, Department of Physics, University of Strathclyde, Glasgow, G4 0NG, UK
⁵ Central Laser Facility, Rutherford Appleton Laboratory, Chilton, Oxfordshire, OX11 0QX, UK
⁶ CNR/INFM/polyLAB, Dipartimento di Fisica “E. Fermi”, Pisa, Italy

Corresponding author: ^a kquinn09@qub.ac.uk

Received: 17 November 2008
Revised: 6 February 2009
Published online: 13 March 2009

Abstract

The proton radiography technique has been used to investigate the incidence of a 3 ×10¹⁹ W/cm² infrared pulse with a 125 μm-diameter gold wire. The laser interaction is observed to drive the growth of a radial electric field ∼ 10¹⁰ V/m on the surface of the wire which rises and decays over a temporal window of 20 ps. Such studies of the ultrafast charging of a solid irradiated at high-intensity may be of relevance to schemes for laser-driven ion acceleration and the fast-ignitor concept for inertial confinement fusion.