Numerical studies of petawatt laser-driven proton generation from two-species targets using a two-dimensional particle-in-cell code

Abstract

Laser-driven generation of high-energy ion beams has recently attracted considerable interest due to a variety of potential applications including proton radiography, ICF fast ignition, nuclear physics or hadron therapy. The ion beam parameters depend on both laser pulse and target parameters, and in order to produce the ion beam of properties required for a particular application the laser and target parameters must be carefully selected, and the mechanism of the ion beam generation should be well understood and controlled. Convenient and commonly used tools for studies of the ion acceleration process are particle-in-cell (PIC) codes. Using two-dimensional PIC simulations, the properties of a proton beam generated from a thin erbium hydride (ErH3) target irradiated by a 25fs laser pulse of linear or circular polarization and of intensity ranging from 1020 to 1021 W/cm2 are investigated and compared with the features of a proton beam produced from a hydrocarbon (CH) target. It has been found that using erbium hydride targets instead of hydrocarbon ones creates an opportunity to generate more compact proton beams of higher mean energy, intensity and of better collimation. This is especially true for the linear polarization of the laser beam, for which the mean proton energy, the amount of high energy protons and the intensity of the proton beam generated from the hydride target is by an order of magnitude higher than for the hydrocarbon target. For the circular polarization, the proton beam parameters are lower than those for the linear one, and the effect of target composition on the acceleration process is weaker.