Probing of laser-plasma experiments at DRACO with a stand-alone probe laser system

In the last decade the investigation of laser-driven plasmas has gained great importance for the development of compact ion accelerator schemes with the efficient generation of multiple 10 MeV proton beams from TNSA experiments with PW laser systems like the Dresden laser acceleration source (DRACO) at the Helmholtz-Zentrum Dresden - Rossendorf. The exploration of the plasma dynamics and its microscopic parameters is crucial for the optimization of the acceleration process. Optical probing is one technique to investigate the temporal plasma evolution and complements numerical particle-in-cell simulations of the underlying physics. However, strong plasma self-emission at the driver lasers wavelength and its harmonics often masks the laser plasma interaction region and thus complicates the data analysis.
Here, we present the implementation of a stand-alone probe laser system, which is temporally synchronized to the DRACO laser. The probe laser system consisting of a seed laser and one regenerative amplifier is based on Yb:YAG and thus provides a fundamental wavelength of 1030 nm, which is different from the wavelength of the DRACO driver laser (800 nm) and its harmonics. We present the advantages of this probing approach, which was tested during an experimental campaign with wire targets of different materials and diameters in the µm range, and give an inside on the current challenges and developments of the probing system.