Mainz 2017 – wissenschaftliches Programm

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A: Fachverband Atomphysik

A 16: XUV/X-ray spectroscopy III

A 16.7: Vortrag

Dienstag, 7. März 2017, 16:15–16:30, N 2

Nuclear excitation by electron capture in optical-laser-generated plasmas — •Jonas Gunst, Yuanbin Wu, Christoph H. Keitel, and Adriana Pálffy — Max-Planck-Institut für Kernphysik, Heidelberg, Germany

In the process of nuclear excitation by electron capture (NEEC), the energy gained when a free electron is recombining into a bound state of an ion is simultaneously transfered to the atomic nucleus which is thereby excited. Recently, we have shown that this process can play the leading role among the nuclear excitation channels in cold, high-density plasmas created by an x-ray free-electron laser (XFEL), even higher than direct nuclear excitation channel using the XFEL beam on resonance [1,2]. However, the actual nuclear excitation rates are still small, strongly constrained by the attainable plasma conditions.

In contrast to XFELs, optical petawatt (PW) lasers are able to create plasmas over a broad parameter region. Exploring the potential of these lasers for NEEC raises several interesting questions: Is it possible to find a point on the accessible density-temperature landscape where NEEC is maximized? How does the NEEC rate depend on the laser parameters? What are the benefits/drawbacks of using optical PW lasers instead of XFELs? In this contribution, we are going to discuss these questions at the example of ^93mMo isomer triggering.

[1] J. Gunst, Yu. A. Litvinov, C. H. Keitel, A. Pálffy, Phys. Rev. Lett. 112, 082501 (2014).

[2] J. Gunst, Y. Wu, N. Kumar, C. H. Keitel and A. Pálffy, Phys. Plasmas 22, 112706 (2015).