Document Type
Article
Publication Date
6-22-2026
Abstract
With the rise of high repetition rate ultra-intense laser systems, there is a need for solid density targets to study relativistic laser–plasma interactions that can operate at the same repetition rate. Flowing liquid targets are attractive because they are self-replenished, debris free, cost effective and easy to use. Liquid targets have been used for high-repetition rate (up to kHz rate) generation of electrons, protons, x rays, and neutrons by our group and elsewhere. In this Letter, we demonstrate a kHz-rate generation of a variety of dynamically shaped complex-structured targets from the interaction of a 1016 W/cm2 focused laser pulse with a submicrometer liquid sheet. The repeatable structured target evolves over microseconds, forming different shapes, such as a hollow channel, a cone, a cone-wire, and a curved surface with a wire. Based on a particle-in-cell simulation, we show that with a cone-wire target, the kHz-rate laser–target interaction could enable the statistical study of warm-dense matter generation that may be useful as a high flux x-ray source. Each stage of the target evolution provides a unique target geometry for ultra-intense laser plasma interaction with numerous potential applications, such as pulsed secondary source generation for high-resolution imaging.
Source Publication
Applied Physics Letters (ISSN 0003-6951 | eISSN 1077-3118)
Recommended Citation
Michael L. Dexter, Stephen J. Hageman, Gregory K. Ngirmang, Kyle D. Frische, Joseph Snyder, John T. Morrison, Enam A. Chowdhury, Anil K. Patnaik; Generation of kHz-rate complex-structured liquid targets for relativistic laser–plasma interactions. Appl. Phys. Lett. 22 June 2026; 128 (25): 251108. https://doi.org/10.1063/5.0328950
Comments
© 2026 The Authors.
This article is published by the American Institute of Physics (AIP), licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (CC BY 4.0), which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license, and indicate if changes were made.
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Funding notes: This work was performed at AFIT supported by the AFOSR Award No. 26AFCOR004; also, partially supported by DTRA Award No. HDTRA-1654726. Co-author G. Ngirmang was supported by the National Research Council.
Supplementary material is available for this research effort via the DOI link on this page.
Co-author Ngirmang was co-affiliated with Singapore University of Technology and Design at the time of this article.