Ultrafast pulse radiolysis using a terawatt laser wakefield accelerator

We report ultrafast pulse radiolysis transient absorption (TA) spectroscopy measurements from the Terawatt Ultrafast High Field Facility (TUHFF) at Argonne National Laboratory. TUHFF houses a 20 TW Ti:sapphire laser system that generates 2.5 nC subpicosecond pulses of multi-mega-electron-volt electrons at 10 Hz using laser wakefield acceleration. The system has been specifically optimized for kinetic TA measurements in a pump-probe fashion. This requires averaging over many shots which necessitates stable, reliable generation of electron pulses. The latter were used to generate excess electrons in pulse radiolysis of liquid water and concentrated solutions of perchloric acid. The hydronium ions in the acidic solutions react with the hydrated electrons resulting in the rapid decay of the transient absorbance at 800 nm on the picosecond time scale. Normalization of the TA signal leads to an improvement in the signal to noise ratio by a factor of 5 to 6. Due the pointing instability of the laser this improvement was limited to a 5 to 10 min acquisition period, requiring periodic recalibration and realignment. Time resolution, defined by the rise time of TA signal from hydrated electron in pulse radiolysis of liquid water, of a few picoseconds, has been demonstrated. The current time resolution is determined primarily by the physical dimensions of the sample and the detection sensitivity. Subpicosecond time resolution can be achieved by using thinner samples, more sensitive detection techniques, and improved electron beam quality. (c) 2007 American Institute of Physics.