Monoenergetic proton beams accelerated by a radiation pressure driven shock

Abstract

High energy ion beams (> MeV) generated by intense laser pulses promise to be viable alternatives to conventional ion beam sources due to their unique properties such as high charge, low emittance, compactness and ease of beam delivery. Typically the acceleration is due to the rapid expansion of a laser heated solid foil, but this usually leads to ion beams with large energy spread. Until now, control of the energy spread has only been achieved at the expense of reduced charge and increased complexity. Radiation pressure acceleration (RPA) provides an alternative route to producing laser-driven monoenergetic ion beams. In this paper, we show the interaction of an intense infrared laser with a gaseous hydrogen target can produce proton spectra of small energy spread (~ 4%), and low background. The scaling of proton energy with the ratio of intensity over density (I/n) indicates that the acceleration is due to the shock generated by radiation-pressure driven hole-boring of the critical surface. These are the first high contrast mononenergetic beams that have been theorised from RPA, and makes them highly desirable for numerous ion beam applications.

References in corpus (8)

• Radiation Pressure Dominate Regime of Relativistic Ion Acceleration
• Radiation Pressure Acceleration of Thin Foils with Circularly Polarized Laser Pulses
• Laser acceleration of ion bunches at the front surface of overdense plasmas
• Radiation Pressure Acceleration of Ion Beams Driven by Circularly Polarized Laser Pulses
• "Light Sail" Acceleration Revisited
• Laser Ion Acceleration Scaling Laws Seen in Muti-Parametric PIC Simulations
• Radiation Pressure Acceleration by Ultraintense Laser Pulses
• Longitudinal Ion Acceleration from High-Intensity Laser Interactions with Underdense Plasma

Cited by in corpus (44)

• Ion acceleration by superintense laser-plasma interaction
• Laser-driven shock acceleration of monoenergetic ion beams
• Radiation pressure dominant acceleration: polarization and radiation reaction effects, and energy increase in three-dimensional simulations
• Radiation Pressure Acceleration: the factors limiting maximum attainable ion energy
• Short Intense Laser Pulse Collapse in Near-Critical Plasma
• Prepulse and amplified spontaneous emission effects on the interaction of a petawatt class laser with thin solid targets
• Laser Accelerated Ions from a Shock Compressed Gas Foil
• The Unexpected Role of Evolving Longitudinal Electric Fields in Generating Energetic Electrons in Relativistically Transparent Plasmas
• Spectral modification of shock accelerated ions using hydrodynamically shaped gas target
• Efficient ion acceleration and dense electron-positron plasma creation in ultra-high intensity laser-solid interactions
• Solitary versus Shock Wave Acceleration in Laser-Plasma Interactions
• Collisionless shock acceleration of narrow energy spread ion beams from mixed species plasmas using 1 $\mu$m lasers
• Laser-driven hole boring and gamma-ray emission in high-density plasmas
• Ultrahigh-density spin-polarized H and D observed via magnetization quantum beats
• Uniform heating of materials into the warm dense matter regime with laser-driven quasi-monoenergetic ion beams
• Suppression of transverse ablative Rayleigh-Taylor-like instability in the hole-boring radiation pressure acceleration by using elliptically polarized laser pulses
• Dense blocks of energetic ions driven by multi-petawatt lasers
• Relativistically Induced Transparency Acceleration (RITA) of Protons and Light-ions with Ultrashort Laser Interaction with Heavy-ion Plasma Density Gradient
• Advanced strategies for ion acceleration using high power lasers
• Optimized laser pulse profile for efficient radiation pressure acceleration of ions
• Vlasov simulation of laser-driven shock acceleration and ion turbulence
• Ion-acoustic Shocks with Self-Regulated Ion Reflection and Acceleration
• Laser-driven Collisionless Shock Acceleration of Ions from Near-critical plasmas
• Suppressing longitudinal double-layer oscillations by using elliptically polarized laser pulses in the hole-boring radiation pressure acceleration regime
• Over-critical sharp-gradient plasma slab produced by the collision of laser-induced blast-waves in a gas jet; Application to high-energy proton acceleration
• First demonstration of multi-MeV proton acceleration from a cryogenic hydrogen ribbon target
• Ion shock acceleration by large amplitude double layers in laser-produced plasmas
• A Review of Laser-Plasma Ion Acceleration
• Collisionless electrostatic shock formation and ion acceleration in intense laser interactions with near critical density plasmas
• Ion acceleration in "dragging field" of a light-pressure-driven piston
• Ion-acoustic shocks with reflected ions: modeling and PIC simulations
• Backward Raman Amplification in the Long-wavelength Infrared
• Collisionless shock acceleration in the corona of an inertial confinement fusion pellet with possible application to ion fast ignition
• On the control of electron heating for optimal laser radiation pressure ion acceleration
• Acceleration of collimated 45 MeV protons by collisionless shocks driven in low-density, large-scale gradient plasmas by a 10^20 W/cm^2, 1 micron wavelength laser
• Enhanced MVA of Polarized Proton Beams via PW Laser-Driven Plasma Bubble
• Collimated protons accelerated from an overdense gas jet irradiated by a 1 micron wavelength high-intensity short-pulse laser
• Radiation pressure acceleration of protons from structured thin-foil targets
• Spectrally peaked proton beams shock accelerated from an optically shaped overdense gas jet by a near-infrared laser
• Optimization of laser-driven proton acceleration in a near-critical-density plasma
• Laser-driven ion acceleration in long-lived optically shaped gaseous targets enhanced by magnetic vortices
• Superintense Laser-driven Ion Beam Analysis
• MeV Argon ion beam generation with narrow energy spread
• Enhanced proton acceleration from near-critical density targets employing intense lasers with mixed polarization