Laser-driven collisionless shock acceleration of protons from gas jets tailored by one or two nanosecond beams

Abstract

It was proposed recently that laser-ion acceleration in gas jets may be significantly improved if each side of a gas jet target is tailored by an auxiliary nanosecond laser pulse [Marquès et al., Phys. Plasmas 28, 023103 (2021)]. In the present study, the proton acceleration by electrostatic shock in these one- or two-side tailored plasmas is investigated using particle-in-cell simulations. It is demonstrated that the formation of a thin plasma layer with a steep density profile and a maximum density of the order of the critical density strongly improves the proton acceleration in the forward direction with a maximum ion energy of tens of MeV with mildly relativistic laser pulses. Proton acceleration up to tens of MeV is predicted using realistic plasma density profiles obtained from tailored gas jet targets compared to a few MeV reported in other publications.