Abstract
A new regime is described for radiation pressure acceleration of a thin foil by an intense laser beam of above 1020 W cm−2. Highly monoenergetic proton beams extending to giga-electron-volt energies can be produced with very high efficiency using circularly polarized light. The proton beams have a very small divergence angle (<4°). This new method allows the construction of ultra-compact proton and ion accelerators with ultra-short particle bursts.
Highlights
Since the pioneering work of Clark et al [1] and the studies done with the Nova PetaWatt laser [2, 3], there has been considerable interest in the generation of multi-MeV proton beams from thin foil targets irradiated by ultraintense lasers [4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11]
This interest is driven by some outstanding qualities of these beams their very low emittance [9], short burst duration and the very large accelerating field (> 1012Vm−1)
Potential applications that might benefit from an accelerator with such properties are Fast Ignition Inerital Confinement Fusion (ICF) [12, 13, 14] and radiotherapy for the treatment of tumours and probing laser-plasma interactions [15]
Summary
Since the pioneering work of Clark et al [1] and the studies done with the Nova PetaWatt laser [2, 3], there has been considerable interest in the generation of multi-MeV proton beams from thin foil targets irradiated by ultraintense lasers [4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11]. This interest is driven by some outstanding qualities of these beams their very low emittance [9] , short burst duration and the very large accelerating field (> 1012Vm−1). The ion energy is dominated by the temperature and density of the hot electron population and scales as (I λ2 )1/2
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