Abstract
Laser-driven ion acceleration has been an active research area in the past two decades with the prospects of designing novel and compact ion accelerators. Many potential applications in science and industry require high-quality, energetic ion beams with low divergence and narrow energy spread. Intense laser ion acceleration research strives to meet these challenges and may provide high charge state beams, with some successes for carbon and lighter ions. Here we demonstrate the generation of well collimated, quasi-monoenergetic titanium ions with energies ∼145 and 180 MeV in experiments using the high-contrast (<10−9) and high-intensity () Trident laser and ultra-thin (∼100 nm) titanium foil targets. Numerical simulations show that the foils become transparent to the laser pulses, undergoing relativistically induced transparency (RIT), resulting in a two-stage acceleration process which lasts until ∼2 ps after the onset of RIT. Such long acceleration time in the self-generated electric fields in the expanding plasma enables the formation of the quasi-monoenergetic peaks. This work contributes to the better understanding of the acceleration of heavier ions in the RIT regime, towards the development of next generation laser-based ion accelerators for various applications.
Highlights
Generation of high-intensity ion beams driven by short pulse lasers has emerged as an important area of laser– plasma research [1,2,3] due to the unique properties of intense short duration ion beams, which can be used for fast isochoric heating of dense matter [4,5,6]
The transparency onset leads to the development of self-organizing field structures at the target rearside when the laser breaks through the target, that we further identify in our simulations to play a major role in accelerating the heavier titanium ions with low divergence and narrow spectral peaks
Ions parabolic traces are collected by an Image Plate (IP) giving a signal output in photostimulated light (PSL) which is calibrated for protons and light ions such as carbon or helium but not for heavier ions such as titanium
Summary
Commons Attribution 3.0 Keywords: laser–plasma interactions, particle acceleration, ion beam generation licence. Intense laser ion acceleration research strives to meet these challenges and may provide high charge state beams, with some successes for carbon and lighter ions. Numerical simulations show that the foils become transparent to the laser pulses, undergoing relativistically induced transparency (RIT), resulting in a two-stage acceleration process which lasts until ∼2 ps after the onset of RIT. Such long acceleration time in the self-generated electric fields in the expanding plasma enables the formation of the quasimonoenergetic peaks. This work contributes to the better understanding of the acceleration of heavier ions in the RIT regime, towards the development of generation laser-based ion accelerators for various applications
Sign-in/Register to view highlights & summary Sign-in/Register to access full text options 
Talk to us
Join us for a 30 min session where you can share your feedback and ask us any queries you have
Schedule a callDisclaimer: All third-party content on this website/platform is and will remain the property of their respective owners and is provided on "as is" basis without any warranties, express or implied. Use of third-party content does not indicate any affiliation, sponsorship with or endorsement by them. Any references to third-party content is to identify the corresponding services and shall be considered fair use under The CopyrightLaw.
