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Investigation of Early Plasma Evolution Induced by Ultrashort Laser Pulses

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Revealing the Structure and Dynamics of Self-Generated Electric and Magnetic Fields Near Plasma Stagnation in

J A Pearcy^1,2, G D Sutcliffe³, T M Johnson^1,3

¹Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Plasma Science and Fusion Center, Cambridge, Massachusetts 02139, USA.

Physical Review Letters

|November 7, 2025

Abstract:

By coupling newly developed triparticle charged particle radiography with radiography reconstruction algorithms and novel reconstruction postprocessing techniques, the spatial structure and time evolution of self-generated electric and magnetic fields in laser-driven vacuum hohlraums have been quantitatively revealed. Through high-fidelity data from a series of experiments, it is shown that late in the hohlraum evolution (after the end of laser drive) these fields are strongly correlated in both space and time, providing evidence that their evolution is primarily dominated by advection with the plasma flow. At these late times, plasma flow velocities inferred from both gross radiography analysis and field reconstructions (and corroborated with Thomson scattering measurements) indicate that the plasma is approaching stagnation near the hohlraum axis. These experiments provide not only new physical insight into spontaneously generated hohlraum fields, but also provide important spatially and temporally resolved information for future benchmarking of numerical codes.

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