Foil Acceleration by Intense Pulsed Ion Beam Ablation Plasma

Abstract

Foil acceleration by ablation pressure produced by the interaction of an intense, pulsed ion-beam with thick targets has been studied, where the thickness of the target is considerably more than the range of the incident ion beam. The experiments were carried out on solid targets with ion beam energy densities ranging from 100 J/cm2 to 4.3 kJ/cm2. The maximum foil velocity obtained by time-of-flight measurement was ∼7.7 km/s, giving the estimated ablation pressure of ∼13 GPa. The experimental and simulation results were in reasonable agreement.