Narrow-band acceleration of gold ions to GeV energies from ultra-thin foils

Year: 2024

Authors: Martin P., Ahmed H., Doria D., Cerchez M., Hanton F., Gwynne D., Alejo A., Fernandez-Tobias J., Green J., Macchi A., Maclellan D., Mckenna P., Ruiz JA., Swantusch M., Willi O., Zhai SH., Borghesi M., Kar S.

Autors Affiliation: Queens Univ Belfast, Ctr Light Matter Interact, Sch Math & Phys, Belfast BT7 1NN, North Ireland; Rutherford Appleton Lab, Cent Laser Facil, Didcot OX11 0QX, Oxon, England; Extreme Light Infrastructure ELI NP, Bucharest, Romania; Horia Hulubei Natl Inst R&D Phys & Nucl Engn IFIN, Bucharest, Romania; Heinrich Heine Univ, Inst Laser & Plasmaphys, Dusseldorf, Germany; Univ Santiago Compostela, IGFAE, Santiago De Compostela, Spain; Univ Politecn Madrid, Inst Fus Nucl, Madrid, Spain; Consiglio Nazl Ric CNR INO, Ist Nazl Ott, Lab Adriano Gozzini, Pisa, Italy; Univ Pisa, Dipartimento Fis Enr Fermi, Pisa, Italy; Univ Strathclyde, Dept Phys, SUPA, Glasgow, Scotland; Shanghai Normal Univ, Dept Math & Phys, Shanghai, Peoples R China.

Abstract: Interaction of intense lasers with nm thick targets provides an attractive regime for the acceleration of ions of all types. Acceleration of heavy ions however is undermined in the presence of low charge contaminant species due to their higher charge-to-mass ratio. Here we show narrow-band acceleration of very heavy Au ions from similar to 15 nm Au foils driven by a sub-Petawatt laser, with spectral peaks of 1.5 +/- 0.5 GeV at fluxes on the order of 10(12) particles per steradian. 3D and 2D particle-in-cell simulations show a complex interplay between different acceleration mechanisms at different stages of the interaction, suggesting the spectrally peaked Au ion bunches stem from strong radiation pressure acceleration on a heavy-ion dominant plasma in the moments just before transparency, followed by an efficient acceleration due to transparency-enhanced mechanisms.

Journal/Review: COMMUNICATIONS PHYSICS

Volume: 7 (1)      Pages from: 3-1  to: 3-9

More Information: We gratefully acknowledge funding from EPSRC, UK (No. EP/J002550/1-Career Acceleration Fellowship held by S.K., Nos. EP/K022415/1, EP/P010059/1, EP/R006202/1, and EP/J500094/1), by the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft Sonderforschungsbereich Transregio18 and Graduiertenkolleg1203 programs, and the IMPULSE project by the European Union Framework Program for Research and Innovation Horizon 2020 under grant agreement No 871161. S. Z. acknowledges support from the Chinese Scholarship Council. The authors acknowledge support from the members of the experimental science group, mechanical engineering, and target fabrication group of the CLF, STFC, UK. The authors also acknowledge the support and helpful discussion from the late Prof. David Neely. Computing resources were provided by STFC Scientific Computing Department’s SCARF cluster, and the Kelvin2 cluster at Queen’s University Belfast.
KeyWords: Fast Ignition; Targets; Driven
DOI: 10.1038/s42005-023-01425-4

Citations: 1
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