Radiography with Low Energy Protons Generated from Ultraintense Laser-plasma Interactions

In order to obtain high quality images of thin objects, we performed an experiment of proton radiography by using low energy protons generated from the interaction of an ultrashort ultraintense laser with solid targets. The protons were produced from a thin polyimide target irradiated by the laser pulse, and their maximum energy was estimated at up to 1.8 MeV. A CR-39 nuclear track detector was used as a proton radiography screen. The proton images were obtained by using an optical microscope and the spatial resolution was evaluated by a Modulation Transfer Function (MTF). We have achieved about $10\;{\mu}m$ spatial resolution of images. The obtained spatial resolution shows about $4{\sim}5$ times better value than the conventional X-ray radiography for inspection or non-destructive test (NDT) purpose.