Proton Radiography in Background Magnetic Fields

TL;DR

This paper addresses the challenge of blurring in proton radiography caused by velocity spread in background magnetic fields and presents a deconvolution method to improve spatial resolution in magnetised plasma experiments.

Contribution

It introduces a deconvolution technique to correct for velocity-spread-dependent blurring in proton radiography under strong magnetic fields, enhancing image resolution.

Findings

Deconvolution recovers radiographs with better than 100 micron resolution.

The method accurately estimates path integrated magnetic fields.

Spatial resolution improved from millimeters to tens of microns.

Abstract

Proton radiography has proved increasingly successful as a diagnostic for electric and magnetic fields in high energy density physics experiments. Most experiments use target-normal-sheath-acceleration sources with a wide energy range in the proton beam, as the velocity spread can help differentiate between electric and magnetic fields and provide time histories in a single shot. However, in magnetised plasma experiments with strong background fields, the broadband proton spectrum leads to velocity-spread-dependent displacement of the beam and significant blurring of the radiograph. We describe the origins of this blurring and show how it can be removed from the experimental measurement, and we outline the conditions under which such deconvolutions are successful. As an example, we apply this method to a magnetised plasma experiment that used a background magnetic field of 3 T. The strong displacement and energy spread of the proton beam reduced the spatial resolution from tens of microns to a few millimetres. The deconvolution procedure is applied showing the accurate recovery of radiographs with resolutions better than 100 microns, enabling the recovery of more accurate estimates of the path integrated magnetic field. This work extends accurate proton radiography to a class of experiments with significant background magnetic fields, particularly those experiments with an applied external magnetic field.