Laser-ion acceleration through controlled surface contamination

Laser-ion acceleration through controlled surface contamination

Enhanced laser-ion acceleration in thin foils of reduced surface

Ion acceleration in the interaction of ultrashort intense laser pulses (~ 2×10 W/cm, 10s-100s fs) with thin solid foils of limited transverse extend (~ 10s of μm) is measured experimentally and studied numerically (by PIC simulations). Reducing the target surface area allows hot electrons to be reflected from target edges during or shortly after the laser pulse. This transverse refluxing in suc...

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 ...