arXiv subjects

Wenjun Ma

Publications and source records attributed to Wenjun Ma.

At least 37 records · Page 2Linked to original sources

arXiv2024

Ultra-short lifetime isomer studies from photonuclear reactions using laser-driven ultra-intense γ-ray

Isomers, ubiquitous populations of relatively long-lived nuclear excited states, play a crucial role in nuclear physics. However, isomers with half-life times of several seconds or less barely had experimental cross section data due to the lack of a suitable measuring method. We report a method of online γ spectroscopy for ultra-short-lived isomers from photonuclear reactions using laser-driven ultra-intense γ-rays. The fastest time resolution can reach sub-ps level with γ-ray intensities >10^{19}/s ({\geqslant} 8 MeV). The ^{115}In(γ, n)^{114m2}In reaction (T_{1/2} = 43.1 ms) was first measured in the high-energy region which shed light on the nuclear structure studies of In element. Simulations showed it would be an efficient way to study ^{229m}Th (T_{1/2} = 7 μs), which is believed to be the next generation of nuclear clock. This work offered a unique way of gaining insight into ultra-short lifetimes and promised an effective way to fill the gap in relevant experimental data.

nucl-ex↗

arXiv2023

Vibration and jitter of free-flowing thin liquid sheets as target for high-repetition-rate laser-ion acceleration

Very thin free-flowing liquid sheets are promising targets for high-repetition-rate laser-ion acceleration. In this work, we report the generation of micrometer-thin free-flowing liquid sheets from the collision of two liquid jets, and study the vibration and jitter in their surface normal direction. The dependence of their motion amplitudes on the generation parameters is studied in detail. The origins of the vibration and jitter are discussed. Our results indicate that when the generation parameters are optimized, the motion amplitudes in the stable region can be stabilized below 3.7 μm to meet the stringent requirement of sheet position stability for a tight-focusing setup in laser-ion acceleration experiments.

physics.plasm-ph↗

arXiv2022

Synchronous post-acceleration of laser-driven protons in helical coil targets by controlling the current dispersion

Post-acceleration of protons in helical coil targets driven by intense, ultrashort laser pulses can enhance the ion energy by utilizing the transient current originating from the self-discharging of the targets. The acceleration length of the protons can exceed a few millimeters, and the accelerating gradient is in the order of GeV/m. How to ensure the synchronization of the accelerating electric field with the protons is a crucial problem for an efficient post-acceleration. In this paper, we study how the electric field mismatch induced by the current dispersion affects the synchronous acceleration of the protons. We propose a scheme using a two-stage helical coil to control the current dispersion. With optimized parameters, the energy gain of protons is enhanced by 4 times. And it is expected that the proton energy would reach 45 MeV using a hundreds-terawatt laser, or over 100 MeV using a petawatt laser, by controlling the current dispersion.

physics.plasm-ph↗

arXiv2022

High-energy-density plasma in femtosecond-laser-irradiated nanowire array targets for nuclear reactions

In this work, the high-energy-density plasmas (HEDP) evolved from joule-class-femtosecond-laser-irradiated nanowire array (NWA) targets are numerically and experimentally studied. The particle-in-cell (PIC) simulations indicate that ions accelerated in the sheath field around the nanowires' surface were eventually confined in NWA plasma, contributing most to the high energy densities. The protons emitted from the front surface of targets provide rich information about the interaction. The electron and ion energy densities in a broad target parameter range are given. Compared to planar targets, the ion energy density is one order of magnitude higher, and the volume of the HEDP is several-fold larger. At optimal target parameters, 8% of the laser energy can be converted to confined protons and results in ion energy densities of up to GJ/cm3 level. Experimental measurements of the emitted ions and neutrons from 2H(d, n)3He fusion from polyethylene and deuterated polyethylene NWA targets confirm the above results.

physics.plasm-ph↗

arXiv2022

Alpha-particle generation from H-11B fusion initiated by laser-accelerated boron ions

Here we report the generation of MeV alpha-particles from H-11B fusion initiated by laser-accelerated boron ions. Boron ions with maximum energy of 6MeV and fluence of 10^9/MeV/sr@5MeV were generated from 60-nm-thick self-supporting boron nanofoils irradiated by 1J femtosecond pulses at an intensity of 10^19W/cm^2. By bombarding secondary hydrogenous targets with the boron ions, 3*10^5/sr alpha-particles from H-11B fusion were registered, which is consistent with the theoretical yield calculated from the measured boron energy spectra. Our results demonstrate an alternative way toward ultrashort MeV alpha-particle sources employing compact femtosecond lasers. The ion acceleration and product measurement scheme are referential for the studies on the ion stopping power and cross-section of the H-11B reaction in solid or plasma.

physics.plasm-ph↗

arXiv2022

Entity Alignment with Reliable Path Reasoning and Relation-Aware Heterogeneous Graph Transformer

Entity Alignment (EA) has attracted widespread attention in both academia and industry, which aims to seek entities with same meanings from different Knowledge Graphs (KGs). There are substantial multi-step relation paths between entities in KGs, indicating the semantic relations of entities. However, existing methods rarely consider path information because not all natural paths facilitate for EA judgment. In this paper, we propose a more effective entity alignment framework, RPR-RHGT, which integrates relation and path structure information, as well as the heterogeneous information in KGs. Impressively, an initial reliable path reasoning algorithm is developed to generate the paths favorable for EA task from the relation structures of KGs, which is the first algorithm in the literature to successfully use unrestricted path information. In addition, to efficiently capture heterogeneous features in entity neighborhoods, a relation-aware heterogeneous graph transformer is designed to model the relation and path structures of KGs. Extensive experiments on three well-known datasets show RPR-RHGT significantly outperforms 11 state-of-the-art methods, exceeding the best performing baseline up to 8.62% on Hits@1. We also show its better performance than the baselines on different ratios of training set, and harder datasets.

cs.CL↗

arXiv2022

A Radiation Tolerant Proton Detector Based on MAPbBr3 single crystal

The performance and radiation tolerance of the proton detector based on MAPbBr3 perovskite single crystal are investigated here with 3MeV protons. The detector can monitor fluence rate and dose quantificationally at a low applied bias electric field(0.01$V/μm$) within a dose range of 45 kGy. The detector can also be worked at zero bias due to the Dember effect. The dark current of the detector reduced to 20% of the initial value after being irradiated with protons to a total fluence of $7.3\times 10^{13} p/cm^2$ (1 MGy), however, it can be recovered at room temperature within hours. These results suggest that this kind of detector has a promising application in proton therapy and proton imaging etc.

physics.ins-det↗

arXiv2021

Local vaccination and systemic tumor suppression via irradiation and manganese adjuvant in mice

Presently 4T-1 luc cells were irradiated with proton under ultra-high dose rate FLASH or with gamma-ray with conventional dose rate, and then subcutaneous vaccination with or without Mn immuno-enhancing adjuvant into the mice for three times. One week later, we injected untreated 4T-1 luc cells on the other side of the vaccinated mice, and found that the untreated 4T-1 luc cells injected later nearly totally did not grow tumor (1/17) while controls without previous vaccination all grow tumors (18/18). The result is very interesting and the findings may help to explore in situ tumor vaccination as well as new combined radiotherapy strategies to effectively ablate primary and disseminated tumors. To our limited knowledge, this is the first paper reporting the high efficiency induction of systemic vaccination suppressing the metastasized/disseminated tumor progression.

physics.med-ph↗

arXiv2021

Super-Heavy Ions Acceleration Driven by Ultrashort Laser Pulses at Ultrahigh Intensity

The acceleration of super-heavy ions (SHIs) from plasmas driven by ultrashort (tens of femtoseconds) laser pulses is a challenging topic waiting for breakthrough. The detecting and controlling of the ionization process, and the adoption of the optimal acceleration scheme are crucial for the generation of highly energetic SHIs. Here, we report the experimental results on the generation of deeply ionized super-heavy ions (Au) with unprecedented energy of 1.2 GeV utilizing ultrashort laser pulses (22 fs) at the intensity of 10^22 W/cm2. A novel self-calibrated diagnostic method was developed to acquire the absolute energy spectra and charge state distributions of Au ions abundant at the charge state of 51+ and reaching up to 61+. The measured charge state distributions supported by 2D particle-in-cell simulations serves as an additional tool to inspect the ionization dynamics associated with SHI acceleration, revealing that the laser intensity is the crucial parameter for the acceleration of Au ions over the pulse duration. The use of double-layer targets results in a prolongation of the acceleration time without sacrificing the strength of acceleration field, which is highly favorable for the generation of high-energy super heavy ions.

physics.plasm-ph↗

arXiv2020

High-efficiency water-window x-ray generation from nanowire array targets irradiated with femtosecond laser pulses

We demonstrate the high-efficiency generation of water-window soft x-ray emissions from polyethylene nanowire array targets irradiated by femtosecond laser pulses at the intensity of 4*10^19 W/cm^2. The experimental results indicate more than one order of magnitude enhancement of the water-window x-ray emissions from the nanowire array targets compared to the planar targets. The highest energy conversion efficiency from laser to water-window x-rays is measured as 0.5%/sr, which comes from the targets with the longest nanowires. Supported by particle-in-cell simulations and atomic kinetic codes, the physics that leads to the high conversion efficiency is discussed.

physics.plasm-ph↗

arXiv2020

Laser-induced damage thresholds of ultrathin targets and their constrain on laser contrast in laser-driven ion acceleration experiments

Single-shot laser-induced damage threshold (LIDT) measurements of multi-type free-standing ultrathin foils were performed in vacuum environment for 800 nm laser pulses with durations τ ranging from 50 fs to 200 ps. Results show that the laser damage threshold fluences (DTFs) of the ultrathin foils are significantly lower than those of corresponding bulk materials. Wide band gap dielectric targets such as SiN and formvar have larger DTFs than those of semiconductive and conductive targets by 1-3 orders of magnitude depending on the pulse duration. The damage mechanisms for different types of targets are studied. Based on the measurement, the constrain of the LIDTs on the laser contrast is discussed.

physics.plasm-ph↗

arXiv2020

Cascaded Generation of a Sub-10-Attosecond Half-Cycle Pulse

Sub-10-attosecond pulses with half-cycle electric fields provide exceptional options to detect and manipulate electrons in the atomic timescale. However, the availability of such pulses is still challenging. Here, we propose a method to generate isolated sub-10-attosecond half-cycle pulses based on a cascade process naturally happening in plasma. A 100s-attosecond pulse is first generated by shooting a moderate overdense plasma with a one-cycle femtosecond pulse. After that, the generated attosecond pulse cascadedly produce a sub-10-attosecond half-cycle pulse in the transmission direction by unipolarly perturbing a nanometer-thin relativistic electron sheet naturally form in the plasma. Two-dimensional particle-in-cell simulations indicate that an isolated half-cycle pulse with the duration of 8.3 attoseconds can be produced. Apart from one-cycle driving pulse, such a scheme also can be realized with a commercial 100-TW 25-fs driving laser by shaping the pulse with a relativistic plasma lens in advance.

physics.plasm-ph↗

arXiv2020

Simultaneous measurements on the electron and X-ray spectra from laser-irradiated near-critical-density double-layer targets at relativistic intensity

We report the experimental results of simultaneous measurements on the electron and X-ray spectra from near-critical-density (NCD) double-layer targets irradiated by relativistic femtosecond pulses at the intensity of 5E19 W/cm^2. The dependence of the electron and X-ray spectra on the density and thickness of the NCD layer was studied. For the optimal targets, electrons with temperature of 5.5 MeV and X-rays with critical energy of 5 keV were obtained. 2D particle-in-cell simulations based on the experimental parameters confirm the electrons are accelerated in the plasma channel through direct laser acceleration, resulting in temperature significantly higher than the pondermotive temperature. Bright X-rays are generated from betatron emission and Thomson backscattering before the electrons leave the double-layer targets.

physics.plasm-ph↗

arXiv2020

Measurements of D-D fusion neutrons generated in nanowire array laser plasma using Timepix3 detector

We present the results of neutron detection in a laser plasma experiment with a CD$_2$ nanowire target. A hybrid semiconductor pixel detector Timepix3 covered with neutron converters was used for the detection of neutrons. D-D fusion neutrons were detected in a polyethylene converter through recoiled protons. Both the energy of recoiled protons and the time-of-flight of neutrons (and thus their energy) were determined. We report $(2.4 \pm 1.8) \times 10^7$ neutrons generated for 1~J of incoming laser energy. Furthermore, we proved that Timepix3 is suitable for difficult operational conditions in laser experiments.

physics.ins-det↗

arXiv2018

Matter creation via gamma-gamma collider driving by 10 PW laser pulses

The nature of matter creation is one of the most basic processes in the universe. According to the quantum electrodynamics theory, matters can be created from pure light through the Breit Wheeler (BW) process. The multi-photon BW process has been demonstrated in 1997 at the SLAC, yet the two-photon BW process has never been observed in the laboratory. Interest has been aroused to investigate this process with lasers due to the developments of the laser technology and the laser based electron accelerators. The laser based proposals may be achieved with NIF and ELI, provided that the signal-to-noise (S/N) ratio of BW is high enough for observation. Here, we present a clean channel to observe the matter creation via a gamma-gamma collider by using the collimated γ-ray pulses generated in the interaction between 10-PW lasers and narrow tubes. More than $3.2\times 10^8$ positrons with a divergence angle of $\sim 7$ degrees can be created in a single pulse, and the S/N is higher than 2000. This scheme, which provides the first realization of gamma-gamma collider in the laboratory, would pave the developments of quantum electrodynamics, high-energy physics and laboratory astrophysics.

physics.plasm-ph↗

arXiv2018

Positioning of Transparent Targets Using Defocusing Method in a Laser Proton Accelerator

We report a positioning method for transparent targets with an accuracy of \SI{2}{μm} for a compact laser proton accelerator. The positioning system consists of two light-emitting diodes (LED), a long working distance objective and two charge coupled devices (CCD) for illumination, imaging and detection, respectively. We developed a defocusing method making transparent targets visible as phase objects and applied it to our system. Precise positioning of transparent targets can be realized by means of minimizing the image contrast of the phase objects. Fast positioning based on the relationship between the radius of spherical aberration ring and defocusing distance is also realized. Laser proton acceleration experiments have been performed to demonstrate the reliability of this positioning system.

physics.app-ph↗

arXiv2017

Special Values of Motivic $L$-Functions and Zeta-Polynomials for Symmetric Powers of Elliptic Curves

Let $\mathcal{M}$ be a pure motive over $\mathbb{Q}$ of odd weight $w\geq 3$, even rank $d\geq 2$, and global conductor $N$ whose $L$-function $L(s,\mathcal{M})$ coincides with the $L$-function of a self-dual algebraic tempered cuspidal symplectic representation of $\mathrm{GL}_{d}(\mathbb{A}_{\mathbb{Q}})$. We show that a certain polynomial which generates special values of $L(s,\mathcal{M})$ (including all of the critical values) has all of its zeros equidistributed on the unit circle, provided that $N$ or $w$ are sufficiently large with respect to $d$. These special values have arithmetic significance in the context of the Bloch-Kato conjecture. We focus on applications to symmetric powers of semistable elliptic curves over $\mathbb{Q}$. Using the Rodriguez-Villegas transform, we use these results to construct large classes of "zeta-polynomials" (in the sense of Manin) arising from symmetric powers of semistable elliptic curves; these polynomials have a functional equation relating $s\mapsto 1-s$, and all of their zeros on the line $\operatorname{Re}(s)=1/2$.

math.NT↗

arXiv2016

The Riemann Hypothesis For Period Polynomials Of Modular Forms

The period polynomial $r_f(z)$ for an even weight $k\geq 4$ newform $f\in S_k(Γ_0(N))$ is the generating function for the critical values of $L(f,s)$. It has a functional equation relating $r_f(z)$ to $r_f\left(-\frac{1}{Nz}\right)$. We prove the Riemann Hypothesis for these polynomials: that the zeros of $r_f(z)$ lie on the circle $|z|=\frac{1}{\sqrt{N}}$ . We prove that these zeros are equidistributed when either $k$ or $N$ is large.

math.NT↗