Surface Plasmon-Driven Electron and Proton Acceleration without Grating Coupling

Abstract

Surface plasmon (SP) excitation in intense laser interaction with solid target can be exploited for enhancing secondary emissions, in particular efficient acceleration of high charge electron bunches. Previous studies have mostly used grating coupling to allow SP excitation, which requires stringent laser contrast conditions to preserve the structural integrity of the target. Here we show via simulations that efficient SP electron acceleration for currently available short pulse lasers can occur in a flat foil irradiated at parallel or grazing incidence ($\sim 5^{\circ }$ with the target surface) without a surface modulation. In turn, the accelerated electrons can be effective for generating proton beams with narrow spectra peaked at $>$100 MeV energies for currently available laser drivers.

References in corpus (7)

• Evidence of resonant surface wave excitation in the relativistic regime through measurements of proton acceleration from grating targets
• Electron acceleration by relativistic surface plasmons in laser-grating interaction
• Surface plasmons in superintense laser-solid interactions
• Monoenergetic High-energy Ion Source via Femtosecond Laser Incident Parallel to a Microplate
• Extensive study of electron acceleration by relativistic surface plasmons
• Near-surface electron acceleration during intense laser-solid interaction in the grazing incidence regime
• Ultrashort high energy electron bunches from tunable surface plasma waves driven with laser wavefront rotation

Cited by in corpus (4)

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• Collimated $\gamma$-flash emission along the target surface irradiated by a laser at non-grazing incidence
• A new scheme for isomer pumping and depletion with high-power lasers