Collisionless shock acceleration of narrow energy spread ion beams from mixed species plasmas using 1 $\mu$m lasers

Abstract

Collisionless shock acceleration of protons and C${}^{6+}$ ions has been achieved by the interaction of a 10${}^{20}$ W/cm${}^2$, 1 $\mu$m laser with a near-critical density plasma. Ablation of the initially solid density target by a secondary laser allowed for systematic control of the plasma profile. This enabled the production of beams with peaked spectra with energies of 10-18 MeV/a.m.u. and energy spreads of 10-20$\%$ with up to 3x10${}^9$ particles within these narrow spectral features. The narrow energy spread and similar velocity of ion species with different charge-to-mass ratio are consistent with acceleration by the moving potential of a shock wave. Particle-in-cell simulations show shock accelerated beams of protons and C${}^{6+}$ ions with energy distributions consistent with the experiments. Simulations further indicate the plasma profile determines the trade-off between the beam charge and energy and that with additional target optimization narrow energy spread beams exceeding 100 MeV/a.m.u. can be produced using the same laser conditions.

arXiv commentAccepted for publication in Physical Review Accelerators and Beams

References in corpus (8)

• Radiation Pressure Dominate Regime of Relativistic Ion Acceleration
• Radiation Pressure Acceleration of Ion Beams Driven by Circularly Polarized Laser Pulses
• Ion acceleration in multispecies targets driven by intense laser radiation pressure
• Monoenergetic proton beams accelerated by a radiation pressure driven shock
• Laser-driven shock acceleration of monoenergetic ion beams
• Ion acceleration from laser-driven electrostatic shocks
• Spectral modification of shock accelerated ions using hydrodynamically shaped gas target
• Solitary versus Shock Wave Acceleration in Laser-Plasma Interactions

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