Abstract
In contrast to ion beams produced by conventional accelerators, ion beams accelerated by ultrashort intense laser pulses have advantages of ultrashort bunch duration and ultrahigh density, which are achieved in compact size. However, it is still challenging to simultaneously enhance their quality and yield for practical applications such as fast ion ignition of inertial confinement fusion. Compared with other mechanisms of laser-driven ion acceleration, the hole-boring radiation pressure acceleration has a special advantage in generating high-fluence ion beams suitable for the creation of high energy density state of matters. In this paper, we present a review on some theoretical and numerical studies of the hole-boring radiation pressure acceleration. First we discuss the typical field structure associated with this mechanism, its intrinsic feature of oscillations, and the underling physics. Then we will review some recently proposed schemes to enhance the beam quality and the efficiency in the hole-boring radiation pressure acceleration, such as matching laser intensity profile with target density profile, and using two-ion-species targets. Based on this, we propose an integrated scheme for efficient high-quality hole-boring radiation pressure acceleration, in which the longitudinal density profile of a composite target as well as the laser transverse intensity profile are tailored according to the matching condition.
Highlights
Peer review under responsibility of Science and Technology Information Center, China Academy of Engineering Physics.S.M
Weng et al / Matter and Radiation at Extremes 3 (2018) 28e39 accelerators [3,4]. These advantages are of particular importance to many applications, such as radiography and radiotherapy [5e7], high energy density physics [8,9], fast ion ignition [10] of inertial confinement fusion (ICF) and so on
Many numerical simulations demonstrate that composite targets with two ion species play a positive role in stabilizing the acceleration process and reducing the ion energy spread in the light-sail radiation pressure acceleration (RPA) [30,56] or the target normal sheath acceleration (TNSA) [57]
Summary
Peer review under responsibility of Science and Technology Information Center, China Academy of Engineering Physics. Weng et al / Matter and Radiation at Extremes 3 (2018) 28e39 accelerators [3,4] These advantages are of particular importance to many applications, such as radiography and radiotherapy [5e7], high energy density physics [8,9], fast ion ignition [10] of inertial confinement fusion (ICF) and so on. To date the efficient generation of such a high-quality high-fluence ion beam remains a key challenge Stimulated by these prospective applications, a variety of novel schemes have been proposed and refined for laser-driven ion acceleration over the past decades. Compared with other laser-driven ion acceleration schemes, the hole-boring RPA has great potential to generate high-fluence ion beams for fast ion ignition of ICF and even for heavy-ion fusion [10,38e42].
Sign-in/Register to view highlights & summary Sign-in/Register to access full text options 
Free) 
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 call
