Coulomb driven energy boost of heavy ions for laser plasma acceleration

Abstract

An unprecedented increase of kinetic energy of laser accelerated heavy ions is demonstrated. Ultra thin gold foils have been irradiated by an ultra short laser pulse at an intensity of $6\times 10^{19}$ W/cm${}^2$. Highly charged gold ions with kinetic energies up to $>200$ MeV and a bandwidth limited energy distribution have been reached by using $1.3$ Joule laser energy on target. $1$D and $2$D Particle in Cell simulations show how a spatial dependence on the ions ionization leads to an enhancement of the accelerating electrical field. Our theoretical model considers a varying charge density along the target normal and is capable of explaining the energy boost of highly charged ions, leading to a higher efficiency in laser acceleration of heavy ions.

References in corpus (6)

• Radiation Pressure Acceleration of Ion Beams Driven by Circularly Polarized Laser Pulses
• Laser Ion Acceleration Scaling Laws Seen in Muti-Parametric PIC Simulations
• Evidence of resonant surface wave excitation in the relativistic regime through measurements of proton acceleration from grating targets
• 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
• Theory of laser ion acceleration from a foil target of nanometers

Cited by in corpus (10)

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• Monte-Carlo approach to calculate the ionization of warm dense matter within particle-in-cell simulations
• Charge-state resolved laser acceleration of gold ions to beyond 7 MeV/u
• A Review of Laser-Plasma Ion Acceleration
• En-route to the fission-fusion reaction mechanism: a status update on laser-driven heavy ion acceleration
• Properties of heavy ion beams produced by a PW sub-picosecond laser
• Laser Ion Acceleration from Mass-Limited Targets with Preplasma
• Electron and ion acceleration from femtosecond laser-plasma peeler scheme
• Nuclear Fusion Enhancement by Heavy Nuclear Catalysts