Tri-stage quasimonoenergetic proton acceleration from a multi-species thick target
Published in Physics of Plasmas, 2018
Abstract: We show that quasimonoenergetic proton beams can be generated through a multi-ion thick target irradiated by a circularly polarized laser pulse. After disrupted by the transverse instabilities in the laser pressure acceleration process, heavy ions as majority species can still provide a co-moving electric field. Different from the dynamics using ultrathin foil, protons with small doped rates can experience a full tri-stage quasimonoenergetic acceleration (hole boring, sheath boosting, and free expansion stages) in this scenario. A theoretical model is developed to explain the proton energy evolution in detail and verified by two-dimensional particle-in-cell simulations. The scaling of proton energy with laser intensity indicates that the 200 MeV proton beam with narrow energy spread (3%–10%) and sufficiently large charges (\(10^{10}–10^{11}\)) required for medical applications can be obtained using 100s TW class laser systems in near future.
Recommended citation: Yang Wan, Chi-Hao Pai, Jianfei Hua, Yipeng Wu, Wei Lu, Fei Li, Chaojie Zhang, Xinlu Xu, Chan Joshi, Warren B. Mori, "Tri-stage quasimonoenergetic proton acceleration from a multi-species thick target," Phys. Plasmas 25, 073105 (2018).
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