  With the advent of high power lasers, new opportunities have opened up for
simulating astrophysical processes in the laboratory. We show that 2nd-order
Fermi acceleration can be directly investigated at the National Ignition
Facility, Livermore. This requires measuring the momentum-space diffusion of 3
MeV protons produced within a turbulent plasma generated by a laser. Treating
Fermi acceleration as a biased diffusion process, we show analytically that a
measurable broadening of the initial proton distribution is then expected for
particles exiting the plasma.
