Preliminary studies on fast particle diagnostics for the future fs-laser facility at PALS

The design, construction and development of proper diagnostics systems for multi-MeV proton/ion and relativistic electron beams, typically generated by fs-laser plasmas, are under study in our laboratories. Ultra-fast plasma ion detection through classical ion collectors (ICs) in time-of-flight (TOF) configuration, shielded by a thin metallic absorber, has been theoretically studied and preliminarily tested using the 300 ps, kJ-class iodine laser operating at PALS Research Centre, in order to cut the long photo-peak contribution and analyse the ultra-fast particle signal. Processing of obtained experimental IC-TOF data, including maximum proton/ion energy estimations, is reported. Design, modelling and simulations for relativistic electron bunch detection, by means of a proper magnetic electron spectrometer, are also included. The effort is mainly devoted to match the diagnostics systems with the peculiarity of fast particle streams which could be generated by the 20 TW Ti:sapphire laser (40 fs, 1 J, 10 Hz) recently installed at PALS.