Plasma pinches: From pursuits of nuclear fusion to an attractive point source of accelerated protons for proton radiography.

Protons accelerated in a radial direction were discovered and used for the first time from pinch plasmas—current-carrying plasma columns compressed by their own magnetic field—according to a study led by the Czech Technical University in Prague and University of Michigan Engineering.

The researchers accelerated protons to 3 mega electron volts (MeV) on relatively small-scale devices operating at a 400-kiloampere (kA) peak current. This expands access to proton radiography, a technique for imaging the ultra-fast evolution of electric and magnetic fields in plasma, once limited to sophisticated, expensive and often massive laser facilities like the OMEGA and OMEGA-EP laser systems at the University of Rochester’s Laboratory for Laser Energetics.