Proof-of-principle demonstration of muon production with an ultrashort high-intensity laser
/ Authors
Feng Zhang, Li Deng, Yanjie Ge, Jiaxing Wen, Bo Cui, K. Feng, Hao Wang, Chen Wu, Ziwen Pan, Hongjie Liu
and 19 more authors
Zhigang Deng, Zongxin Zhang, Liangwen Chen, D. Yan, L. Shan, Zongqiang Yuan, C. Tian, J. Qian, Jiacheng Zhu, Yi Xu, Yuhong Yu, Xue-Heng Zhang, Lei Yang, Weimin Zhou, Yu-Juan Gu, Wentao Wang, Y. Leng, Zhiyu Sun, Ruxin Li
/ Abstract
Muons play a crucial role in both fundamental and applied physics. Traditionally, they have been generated from cosmic rays or with proton accelerators. With the advent of ultrashort high-intensity lasers capable of accelerating electrons to gigaelectronvolt energies, muons can also be produced in laser laboratories. Here we report a proof-of-principle experiment of muon production. We accelerated an electron beam to gigaelectronvolt energies with an ultrashort, high-intensity laser pulse and passed the beam through a lead converter target in which muons were generated. We confirmed the muon signal by measuring its lifetime. We investigated the photo-production, electro-production and Bethe–Heitler processes underlying muon generation and their subsequent detection with Geant4 simulations. The results show that the dominant contribution stems from photo-production and electro-production. We estimate that a muon yield of up to 0.01 muon per incoming electron could be achieved in the converter target. This laser-driven muon source features compact, ultrashort pulses and high flux. Moreover, its implementation in a small laser laboratory is relatively straightforward, which dramatically reduces barriers for research in areas such as muonic X-ray elemental analysis or muon spin spectroscopy. Muons are conventionally produced from cosmic rays or with a proton accelerator. Now a proof-of-principle experiment demonstrates the feasibility of muon production with a laser-driven electron beam with gigaelectronvolt energy in a lead converter target.
Journal: Nature Physics