High Energy Gain in Three-Dimensional Simulations of Light Sail Acceleration
arXiv:1403.2709 · doi:10.1063/1.4894092
Abstract
The dynamics of radiation pressure acceleration in the relativistic light sail regime are analysed by means of large scale, three-dimensional (3D) particle-in-cell simulations. Differently to other mechanisms, the 3D dynamics leads to faster and higher energy gain than in 1D or 2D geometry. This effect is caused by the local decrease of the target density due to transverse expansion leading to a "lighter sail". However, the rarefaction of the target leads to an earlier transition to transparency limiting the energy gain. A transverse instability leads to a structured and inhomogeneous ion distribution.
4 figures
References in corpus (10)
- Ion acceleration by superintense laser-plasma interaction
- Radiation Pressure Dominate Regime of Relativistic Ion Acceleration
- Radiation Pressure Acceleration of Thin Foils with Circularly Polarized Laser Pulses
- Radiation Pressure Acceleration of Ion Beams Driven by Circularly Polarized Laser Pulses
- Ion acceleration in multispecies targets driven by intense laser radiation pressure
- Self-organizing GeV, nano-Coulomb, collimated proton beam from laser foil interaction at 7 * 10^21 W/cm2
- Towards radiation pressure acceleration of protons using linearly polarized ultrashort petawatt laser pulses
- Radiation pressure dominant acceleration: polarization and radiation reaction effects, and energy increase in three-dimensional simulations
- Unlimited Energy Gain in the Laser-Driven Radiation Pressure Dominant Acceleration of Ions
- Stabilized Radiation Pressure Dominated Ion Acceleration from Thin-foil Targets