Enhanced proton acceleration from near-critical density targets employing intense lasers with mixed polarization

Abstract

We demonstrate a scheme for enhanced proton acceleration from near-critical-density targets by splitting a laser pulse into a linearly and a circularly polarized laser pulse. The combination of two laser pulses generates a shock wave as well as hole boring effect at the front surface of the target. Protons at the front get combined acceleration from the two acceleration mechanisms. 2D-PIC simulation shows nearly two-fold enhancement in proton energy from this mechanism for a near-critical density target. The acceleration mechanism is also studied with different target density and thickness to ascertain the target parameters over which the acceleration process shows dominant behaviour.

References in corpus (4)

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