Assessment of sensitivity improvement for Time-Of-Flight schemes in experiments with high intensity lasers

In the last decades the development of laser-driven acceleration and inertial fusion fields of research required the commissioning of laser systems with increasing power and repetion rate. This was accompained by a sensible growth of the produced electromagnetic pulses (EMP) inside the experimental chamber and on its surrounding, hindering the employment of any electronic device. Hence, a lot of effort has been put to develop optimized diagnostic systems able to cope with this problem. In this work we present the strong detrimental effects that EMP can have on the sensitivity of TOF measurements leading even to the complete loss of any useful detected information. We compare the signals obtained operating with a non-optimized system with one developed to cope with the EMP presence, showing its effectiveness in enhancing the quality of the acquired signals. Once that signals are deprived of the EMP contribution, it is possible to further improve the TOF accuracy by using the data from the detector calibration. We show here the particle spectrum obtained in this way in high power laser-matter experiments with solid targets, and we compare it with the case where the detector calibration was not taken into account.