Highly Efficient Heavy Ion Acceleration from Laser Interaction with Dusty Plasma

Abstract

Energetic heavy ions with short duration can be generated in the interaction of ultrashort ultraintense (USUI) laser pulse with solid matter. However, the energy conversion efficiency from laser to heavy ions is usually very low. Herein, a novel scheme for efficient transfer of USUI laser energy to the heavy ions of microscopic dust grains in dusty plasma is proposed. Due to the resulting ultraintense space‐charge field, the heavy ions expand isotropically together with the laser heated and expelled grain electrons as a plasma cloud on roughly the ion acoustic timescale. It is found that with 3.1 × 1020 W cm−2 USUI laser, one can produce hundreds‐megaelectronvolt C6+ ions with ≈60% energy transfer efficiency. In fact, up to 300 GeV Au79+ ions with ≈30% energy transfer efficiency can be obtained by using 8.8 × 1023 W cm−2 laser. This result suggests the possibility of using hundreds‐petawatt laser facility to investigate heavy‐ion collisions for nuclear state detection and quantum cardiodynamics phase transition.