Motivation

Interest on crystal growth and characterization at the Department of Physics, West University of Timisoara (WUT) began 40 years ago, under the supervision of Prof. Dr. Mircea Zaganescu. The Crystal growth laboratory is part of the Physics Department of the West University of Timisoara. The main goal has been to design set-ups and elaborate technology to obtain and to characterize the crystals. During the time attention was focused on several objectives: to obtain various type of crystals, to characterize their physical properties and to use numerical simulation methods in order to optimize the crystals quality, and the set-ups details. Two crystal growth methods were especially developed: the vertical Bridgman technique (for fluorides) and the Edge-defined Film-fed Growth method in order to obtain shaped crystals (sapphire and fluorides). Over time more than 75 ISI papers were published in the field of crystal growth.

In the past years the team of the Crystal Growth Laboratory, West University of Timisoara (WUT) had gained a significant experience in the field of growing and characterization of silicon and rare earth doped fluoride crystals. WUT has already shown his interest to take contact with the research activities at ELI: WUT is member of the ELI Academic Forum and in the last 4 years, researchers from ELI have taught ELI-research related courses to the master students from WUT.

The current project aims:

  • to optimize through simulations the conditions for laser based production of very high fluxes of energetic radiations, in particular of protons and gamma rays, the later obtained from accelerated electrons through bremsstrahlung process in high-Z convertors;
  • to study the effects of radiation on materials and devices, both at theoretical level through modeling and at experimental level through irradiation with protons and gamma at existing facilities

These topics are related to the ELI-NP WhiteBook topics 5.6.15 (Materials research in high intensity radiation field) and 5.2.7 (Modelling of High-Intensity Laser Interaction with Matter) and in line with development of the irradiation station in the experimental area of ELI-NP facility where the two laser beam of 10 PW at 1 Hz repetition rates will be available. The optimization for high particles fluxes and doses is not seeking to maximize the energy of particles, but rather their number at intermediate energies (up to few tens of MeV). Such conditions are also of high interests for nuclear studies with laser accelerated particles such as production of isomeric states in order to study their behavior in hot plasma environments (topic 5.2.8 “Studies of enhanced decay of 26 Al in hot plasma environments” in ELI-NP WhiteBook).