Towards radiation pressure acceleration of protons using linearly polarized ultrashort petawatt laser pulses

Abstract

Particle acceleration using ultraintense, ultrashort laser pulses is one of the most attractive topics in relativistic laser-plasma research. We report proton/ion acceleration in the intensity range of 5x1019 W/cm2 to 3.3x1020 W/cm2 by irradiating linearly polarized, 30-fs, 1-PW laser pulses on 10- to 100-nm-thick polymer targets. The proton energy scaling with respect to the intensity and target thickness was examined. The experiments demonstrated, for the first time with linearly polarized light, a transition from the target normal sheath acceleration to radiation pressure acceleration and showed a maximum proton energy of 45 MeV when a 10-nm-thick target was irradiated by a laser intensity of 3.3x1020 W/cm2. The experimental results were further supported by two- and three-dimensional particle-in-cell simulations. Based on the deduced proton energy scaling, proton beams having an energy of ~ 200 MeV should be feasible at a laser intensity of 1.5x1021 W/cm2.

33 pages

References in corpus (7)

• 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
• Ion acceleration in multispecies targets driven by intense laser radiation pressure
• Dominance of Radiation Pressure in Ion Acceleration with Linearly Polarized Pulses at Intensities of $10^{21}\text{W}{\text{cm}}^{-2}$
• Efficient ion acceleration by collective laser-driven electron dynamics with ultra-thin foil targets

Cited by in corpus (14)

• Laser acceleration of highly energetic carbon ions using a double-layer target composed of slightly underdense plasma and ultrathin foil
• Laser-Driven Rayleigh-Taylor Instability: Plasmonics Effects and Three-Dimensional Structures
• Radiation Pressure Acceleration: the factors limiting maximum attainable ion energy
• Prepulse and amplified spontaneous emission effects on the interaction of a petawatt class laser with thin solid targets
• Strong field electrodynamics of a thin foil
• Relativistic Mirrors in Laser Plasmas (Analytical Methods)
• Using XFELs for Probing of Complex Interaction Dynamics of Ultra-Intense Lasers with Solid Matter
• Advanced strategies for ion acceleration using high power lasers
• High Energy Gain in Three-Dimensional Simulations of Light Sail Acceleration
• A Review of Laser-Plasma Ion Acceleration
• Modeling the interaction of an ultra-high intensity laser pulse with nano-layered flat-top cone targets for ion acceleration
• Imprint of the stochastic nature of photon emission by electrons on the proton energy spectra in the laser-plasma interaction
• 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
• Origins of plateau formation in ion energy spectra under target normal sheath acceleration