Abstract

The development of high intensity lasers has opened up new opportunities for nuclear physics studies. Lasers are promising tools to study nuclear properties in extreme plasma conditions, which cannot be reached with conventional particle accelerators. In a plasma, the interactions between a nucleus and its electronic cloud can be strongly modified and unusual excitation processes cannot be neglected anymore such as nuclear excitation by electronic capture (NEEC) and nuclear excitation by electronic transition (NEET). The NEEC (unobserved) and NEET (observed in ¹⁹⁷Au [1], ¹⁸⁹Os [2,3] and ¹⁹³Ir [4] in accelerator based experiments) are exotic processes, which can be dominant in particular plasma conditions of temperature and density [5]. We have undertaken a joint experimental and theoretical program to investigate the ^84mRb excitation rate in laser produced plasma.

© 2013 IEEE