Dominance of Radiation Pressure in Ion Acceleration with Linearly Polarized Pulses at Intensities of 1021  W cm-2

Qiao, B.; Borghesi, M.; Kar, S.; Gibbon, P.; Zepf, M.; Geissler, M.

doi:10.1103/PhysRevLett.108.115002

Journal Article

PreJuSER-20325

Dominance of Radiation Pressure in Ion Acceleration with Linearly Polarized Pulses at Intensities of 1021 W cm-2

Qiao, B. ; Kar, S. ; Geissler, M. ; Gibbon, P.FZJ* ; Zepf, M. ; Borghesi, M.

2012
APS College Park, Md.

Physical review letters 108, 115002 (2012) [10.1103/PhysRevLett.108.115002]

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Please use a persistent id in citations: http://hdl.handle.net/2128/7439 doi:10.1103/PhysRevLett.108.115002

Abstract: A novel regime is proposed where, by employing linearly polarized laser pulses at intensities 10(21) W cm(-2) (2 orders of magnitude lower than discussed in previous work [T. Esirkepov et al., Phys. Rev. Lett. 92, 175003 (2004)]), ions are dominantly accelerated from ultrathin foils by the radiation pressure and have monoenergetic spectra. In this regime, ions accelerated from the hole-boring process quickly catch up with the ions accelerated by target normal sheath acceleration, and they then join in a single bunch, undergoing a hybrid light-sail-target normal sheath acceleration. Under an appropriate coupling condition between foil thickness, laser intensity, and pulse duration, laser radiation pressure can be dominant in this hybrid acceleration. Two-dimensional particle-in-cell simulations show that 1.26 GeV quasimonoenergetic C6+ beams are obtained by linearly polarized laser pulses at intensities of 10(21) W cm(-2).

Keyword(s): J

Classification:

Physics, Multidisciplinary

Note: We acknowledge helpful discussions with A. Macchi, J. Schreiber, and B. Dromey. The work is supported by EPSRC (Grants No. EP/E035728/1 and No. EP/D/06337X/1). Computing resources from e-Science facility of RAL-STFC are also acknowledged.

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