Generation of heavy ion beams using short pulse lasers

Abstract

Generation of heavy ion beams from solid targets irradiated by intense short laser pulses is studied. The interest is driven by the ion beam's potential for many groundbreaking applications in scientific, technological, and medical areas [1,2]. Numerical modeling using relativistic implicit Particle-in-Cell (PIC) code has been performed to study mechanisms of heavy ion acceleration. The study aims to model the efficient production of 100s of MeV heavy ions on the Titan laser at LLNL. We explore the conventional target normal sheath acceleration (TNSA), as well as more advanced mechanisms such as the radiation pressure acceleration (RPA). We studied the energy scaling from ultrathin foils made of low-, mid- and high-z material and determined that the kinetic energy of ions increases with ion mass, while the charge-to-mass ratio gradually decreases from ~0.5 for light ions (carbon) to ~0.3 for heavy ions (gold).