Can laser - driven protons be used as diagnostics in ICF experiments ?

Point projection proton backlighting was recently used to image a cylindrical imploding target at Rutherford Appleton Laboratory (UK). Due to the relatively low energy and to the very large mass densities reached during implosion, protons traveling through the target undergo a very large number of collisions which reduced the resolution. Here, we present a simple analytical model to study the proton radiography (PR) performance as a function of the main experimental parameters. This approach leads to define two different criteria for PR resolution describing different experimental conditions.