Enhancement of Magnetic Vortex Acceleration by Laser Interaction with Near-Critical Density Plasma inside a Hollow Conical Target

Xueming Li,Yuanzhi Zhou,Deji Liu,Yue Chao,Rui Xie,Lihua Cao,Shutong Zhang,Chunyang Zheng,Tian Yang,Zhanjun Liu,Katarzyna Batani

doi:10.1155/2022/5671790

Abstract

The effects of magnetic vortex acceleration (MVA) are investigated with two-dimensional particle-in-cell (PIC) simulations by laser interaction with near-critical density (NCD) plasma inside a hollow conical plasma. Energetic and collimated proton beams can be accelerated by a longitudinal charge-separation field. Energetic protons with a peak energy of 220 MeV are produced in PIC simulations. Compared with a uniform NCD plasma, both the cutoff energy and collimation of proton beams are improved remarkably. Furthermore, the influence of different gap sizes of cone tip is taken into account. For optimizing magnetic vortex acceleration, the gap size of the cone tip is suggested to match the focal spot size of laser pulse.

Highlights

Ion acceleration driven by ultraintense laser pulse has huge potential advantages and a wide promising application prospect [1,2,3], such as proton imaging [4], hadron therapy
The magnetic vortex acceleration (MVA) regime has an advantage in collimation, which is the potential to medical application of proton beam and beam transmission
[28] that an enhanced magnetic vortex acceleration (EMVA) can be obtained using an advanced target where the near-critical density plasma is transversely confined between the high-Z dense wires

Summary

Introduction

Ion acceleration driven by ultraintense laser pulse has huge potential advantages and a wide promising application prospect [1,2,3], such as proton imaging [4], hadron therapy [5], tabletop particle accelerator [6], and fast ignition of inertial confinement fusion [7, 8]. GeV level energy were reached, and the required laser pulses were supposed to have hundreds of terawatts even petawatt power It has been proposed in the previous study [28] that an enhanced magnetic vortex acceleration (EMVA) can be obtained using an advanced target where the near-critical density plasma is transversely confined between the high-Z dense wires. Such a scheme makes it possible that the magnetic vortex structure formed and the induced electrostatic field become much enhanced and stabilized.

Simulation Setup

Simulation Results

Summary