Photonuclear fission from high energy electrons from ultraintense laser-solid interactions

Phys Rev Lett. 2000 Jan 31;84(5):903-6. doi: 10.1103/PhysRevLett.84.903.

Abstract

A new regime of laser-matter interactions in which the quiver motion of plasma electrons is fully relativistic, with energies extending well above the threshold for nuclear processes, is studied using a petawatt laser system. In solid target experiments with focused intensities exceeding 10(20) W/cm(2), high energy electron generation, hard bremsstrahlung, and nuclear phenomena have been observed. We report here a quantitative comparison of the high energy electrons and the bremsstrahlung spectrum, as measured by photonuclear reaction yields, including the photoinduced fission of 238U.