Selective Ion Acceleration by Intense Radiation Pressure

Year: 2021

Authors: McIlvenny A., Doria D., Romagnani L., Ahmed H., Booth N., Ditter E. J., Ettlinger O. C., Hicks G. S., Martin P., Scott G. G., Williamson S. D. R., Macchi A., McKenna P., Najmudin Z., Neely D., Kar S., Borghesi M.

Autors Affiliation: Queens Univ Belfast, Ctr Plasma Phys, Belfast BT7 1NN, Antrim, North Ireland; Extreme Light Infrastruct ELI NP, 30 Reactorului St, Magurele 077125, Romania; Horia Hulubei Natl Inst R&D Phys & Nucl Engn IFIN, 30 Reactorului St, Magurele 077125, Romania; Univ Paris Saclay, CEA, Ecole Polytech, LULI CNRS, F-91128 Palaiseau, France; Rutherford Appleton Lab, Cent Laser Facil, Didcot OX11 0QX, Oxon, England; Imperial Coll London, John Adams Inst Accelerator Sci, Blacken Lab, London SW7 2BZ, England; Univ Strathclyde, Dept Phys, SUPA, Glasgow G4 0NG, Lanark, Scotland; Consiglio Nazl Ric CNR INO, Res Unit Adrian Gozzini, Ist Nazl Ott, I-56124 Pisa, Italy; Univ Pisa, Dipartimento Fis Enrico Fermi, I-56127 Pisa, Italy.

Abstract: We report on the selective acceleration of carbon ions during the interaction of ultrashort, circularly polarized and contrast-enhanced laser pulses, at a peak intensity of 5.5 x 10(20) W/cm(2), with ultrathin carbon foils. Under optimized conditions, energies per nucleon of the bulk carbon ions reached significantly higher values than the energies of contaminant protons (33 MeV/nucleon vs 18 MeV), unlike what is typically observed in laser-foil acceleration experiments. Experimental data, and supporting simulations, emphasize different dominant acceleration mechanisms for the two ion species and highlight an (intensity dependent) optimum thickness for radiation pressure acceleration; it is suggested that the preceding laser energy reaching the target before the main pulse arrives plays a key role in a preferential acceleration of the heavier ion species.

Journal/Review: PHYSICAL REVIEW LETTERS

Volume: 127 (10)      Pages from: 194801-1  to: 194801-7

More Information: The authors would like to thank the GEMINI staff, engineering and target fabrication groups at the CLF for their support. This work was funded by EPSRC through grant EP/K022415/1. The EPOCH code is also funded by EPSRC (grants EP/G056803/1, EP/G055165/1 andEP/M022463/1) . The authors acknowledge computing resources provided by STFC Scientific Computing Department´s SCARF cluster as well Kelvin High Performance Computing cluster at Queen´s University Belfast.
KeyWords: laser-plasma acceleration, radiation pressure acceleration, ultrashort lasers, carbon ion acceleration
DOI: 10.1103/PhysRevLett.127.194801

Citations: 25
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