49 / 2025-03-04 20:24:04

A Forward Analysis for Proton Radiography in High-Energy-Density Plasmas to disentangle Coulomb Scattering and Electromagnetic effects

Proton Radiography,Coulomb Scattering,High-energy-density plasma

Charged particle radiography of high-energy-density plasma systems inherently capture deflection information induced by both self-generated electromagnetic fields and Coulomb scattering. In the warm dense matter regime, these two effects are often coupled, leading to significant uncertainties when conventional methods are used to invert the electromagnetic field. In this work, we have developed a three-dimensional forward analysis method for proton radiography that specifically incorporates modeling of collision-relevant effects, including energy loss due to inelastic collisions from bound electrons in multi-component targets, elastic Coulomb scattering induced by free electrons and partially ionized atoms, and the influences of background hydrodynamic motions. By coupling this method with three-dimensional magnetohydrodynamic simulations and actual diagnostic configurations, the radiographical results from laser-driven Richtmyer–Meshkov instability experiments are analyzed, where the contributions of the two deflection mechanisms are evaluated, and the method for distinguishing between them is explored.