Radiation-Pressure Acceleration of Ion Beams from Nanofoil Targets: The Leaky Light-Sail Regime

Qiao, B.; Borghesi, M.; Geissler, M.; Dromey, B.; Gibbon, P.; Zepf, M.; Karmakar, A.

doi:10.1103/PhysRevLett.105.155002

Journal Article

Radiation-Pressure Acceleration of Ion Beams from Nanofoil Targets: The Leaky Light-Sail Regime

Qiao, B.FZJ* ; Zepf, M. ; Borghesi, M. ; Dromey, B. ; Geissler, M. ; Karmakar, A.FZJ* ; Gibbon, P.FZJ*

2010
APS College Park, Md.

Physical review letters 105, 155002 (2010) [10.1103/PhysRevLett.105.155002]

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Please use a persistent id in citations: http://hdl.handle.net/2128/7254 doi:10.1103/PhysRevLett.105.155002

Abstract: A new ion radiation-pressure acceleration regime, the "leaky light sail," is proposed which uses sub-skin-depth nanometer foils irradiated by circularly polarized laser pulses. In the regime, the foil is partially transparent, continuously leaking electrons out along with the transmitted laser field. This feature can be exploited by a multispecies nanofoil configuration to stabilize the acceleration of the light ion component, supplementing the latter with an excess of electrons leaked from those associated with the heavy ions to avoid Coulomb explosion. It is shown by 2D particle-in-cell simulations that a monoenergetic proton beam with energy 18 MeV is produced by circularly polarized lasers at intensities of just 10(19) W/cm(2). 100 MeV proton beams are obtained by increasing the intensities to 2 x 10(20) W/cm(2).

Keyword(s): J

Classification:

Physics, Multidisciplinary

Note: B. Q. acknowledges the support from the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation. M. Z. thanks the support from the Royal Society. The work was also supported by EPSRC (Grants No. EP/C003586/1 and No. EP/D/06337X/1). Computing resources on JUROPA at JSC (Grants No. jzam04 and No. jjsc04) and VIP at RZG (collaboration grant with MPQ) are both acknowledged.

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