A compact electron spectrometer for hot electron measurement in pulsed laser solid interaction

Ultraintense laser-matter interactions provide a unique source of temporally short, broad spectrum electrons, which may be utilized in many varied applications. One such, which we are pursuing, is as part of a diagnostic to trace magnetic field lines in a magnetically confined fusion device. An essential aspect of this scheme is to have a detailed characterization of the,electron. angular and energy distribution. To this effect we designed and constructed a compact electron spectrometer that uses permanent magnets for electron energy dispersion and over 100 scintillating fibers coupled to a 1024 x 1024 pixel charge coupled device as the detection system. This spectrometer has electron energy coverage from 10 keV to 60 MeV. We tested the spectrometer on a high intensity (10(17)-10(21) W/cm(2)) short pulse (<100 fs) laser, JanUSP, at. Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory using various solid targets. The details of the spectrometer and the experimental results will be reported. (C) 2003 American Institute of Physics.