Laser-driven Collisionless Shock Acceleration of Ions from Near-critical plasmas

Abstract

This paper overviews experimental and numerical results on acceleration of narrow energy spread ion beams by an electrostatic collisionless shockwave driven by 1 um (Omega EP) and 10 um (UCLA Neptune Laboratory) lasers in near critical density CH and He plasmas, respectively. Shock waves in CH targets produced high-energy 50 MeV protons (energy spread of <30%) and 314 MeV C6+ ions (energy spread of <10%). Observation of acceleration of both protons and carbon ions to similar velocities is consistent with reflection of particles off the moving potential of a shock front. For shocks driven by CO2 laser in a gas jet, 30 MeV peak in He ion spectrum was detected. Particle-in-cell simulations indicate that regardless of the target further control over its density profile is needed for optimization of accelerated ion beams in part of energy spread, yield and maximum kinetic energy.

arXiv comment16 pages, 7 figures

References in corpus (8)

• Ion acceleration by superintense laser-plasma interaction
• PAMELA Measurements of Cosmic-ray Proton and Helium Spectra
• 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
• Non-linear diffusive acceleration of heavy nuclei in supernova remnant shocks
• Laser Accelerated Ions from a Shock Compressed Gas Foil
• Collisionless shock acceleration of narrow energy spread ion beams from mixed species plasmas using 1 $\mu$m lasers

Cited by in corpus (1)

• Optimization of laser-driven proton acceleration in a near-critical-density plasma