Controllable Laser Ion Acceleration

Laser-ion acceleration through controlled surface contamination

Ion acceleration from laser-driven electrostatic shocks

Multi-dimensional particle-in-cell simulations are used to study the generation of electrostatic shocks in plasma and the reflection of background ions to produce high-quality and high-energy ion beams. Electrostatic shocks are driven by the interaction of two plasmas with different density and/or relative drift velocity. The energy and number of ions reflected by the shock increase with increa...

Ion acceleration by superintense laser-plasma interaction

Ion acceleration driven by superintense laser pulses is attracting an impressive and steadily increasing effort. Motivations can be found in the applicative potential and in the perspective to investigate novel regimesasavailable laser intensitieswill be increasing.Experimentshavedemonstrated, over awide range of laser and target parameters, the generation of multi-MeV proton and ion beams with...

Bacterial cells enhance laser driven ion acceleration

Intense laser produced plasmas generate hot electrons which in turn leads to ion acceleration. Ability to generate faster ions or hotter electrons using the same laser parameters is one of the main outstanding paradigms in the intense laser-plasma physics. Here, we present a simple, albeit, unconventional target that succeeds in generating 700 keV carbon ions where conventional targets for the ...

Ion Acceleration by Short Chirped Laser Pulses

Direct laser acceleration of ions by short frequency chirped laser pulses is investigated theoretically. We demonstrate that intense beams of ions with a kinetic energy broadening of about 1% can be generated. The chirping of the laser pulse allows the particles to gain kinetic energies of hundreds of MeVs, which is required for hadron cancer therapy, from pulses of energies in the order of 100...