Energetic spin-polarized proton beams from two-stage coherent acceleration in laser-driven plasma

Abstract

We propose a scheme to overcome the great challenge of polarization loss in spin-polarized ion acceleration. When a petawatt laser pulse penetrates through a compound plasma target consisting of a double layer slab and prepolarized hydrogen halide gas, a strong forward moving quasistatic longitudinal electric field is constructed by the self-generated laser-driven plasma. This field with a varying drift velocity efficiently boosts the prepolarized protons via a two-stage coherent acceleration process. Its merit is not only achieving a highly energetic beam but also eliminating the undesired polarization loss of the accelerated protons. We study the proton dynamics via Hamiltonian analyses, specifically deriving the threshold of triggering the two-stage coherent acceleration. To confirm the theoretical predictions, we perform three-dimensional PIC simulations, where unprecedented proton beams with energy approximating half GeV and polarization ratio $\sim$ 94\% are obtained.

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Cited by in corpus (4)

• Spin-polarized electron beam generation in the colliding-pulse injection scheme
• Acceleration of spin-polarized proton beams via two parallel laser pulses
• Generation of arbitrarily polarized muon pairs via polarized $e^{-}{e}^{+}$ collision
• Optimization of laser-driven proton acceleration in a near-critical-density plasma