Plasma-laser ion discrimination by TOF technique applied to coupled SiC detectors.

¹ Department of Physics and Astronomy, University of Catania, via S.Sofia, 64 95123 Catania, Italy
² LNS-INFN via S. Sofia, 62 95123 Catania, Italy
³ CSFN&SM via S.Sofia, 64 95123 Catania, Italy

^* Corresponding author: cavallaro@lns.infn.it

Published online: 9 January 2018

Abstract

The rate estimation of nuclear reactions induced in high intensity laser-target interaction (≥10¹⁶ W/cm²), is strongly depending on the neutron detection efficiency and ion charge discrimination, according to particles involved in exit open-channels. Ion discrimination is basically performed by means of analysis of pits observed on track detector, which is critically dependent on calibration and/or fast TOF devices based on SiC and diamond detectors. Last setup is used to determine the ion energy and to obtain a rough estimation of yields. However, for each TOF interval, the dependence of yield from the energy deposited in the detector sensitive region, introduces a distortion in the ion spectra. Moreover, if two ion species are present in the same spectrum, the discrimination of their contribution is not attainable. In this paper a new method is described which allows to discriminate the contribution of two ion species in the wide energy range of nuclear reactions induced in laser-target interactions. The method is based on charge response of two TOF-SiC detectors, of suitable thicknesses, placed in adjacent positions. In presence of two ion species, the response of the detectors, associated with different energy losses, can determine the ion specific contribution to each TOF interval.