Ion acceleration with an ultra-intense two-frequency laser tweezer

Abstract: Ultra-intense lasers produce and manipulate plasmas, allowing to locally generate extremely high static and electromagnetic fields. This study presents a concept of an ultra-intense optical tweezer, where two counter-propagating circularly polarized intense lasers of different frequencies collide on a nano-foil. Interfering inside the foil, lasers produce a beat wave, which traps and moves plasma electrons as a thin sheet with an optically controlled velocity. The electron displacement creates a plasma micro-capacitor with an extremely strong electrostatic field, that efficiently generates narrow-energy-spread ion beams from the multi-species targets, e.g. protons from the hydrocarbon foils. The proposed ion accelerator concept is explored theoretically and demonstrated numerically with the multi-dimensional particle-in-cell simulations.

Recommended citation: Yang Wan, Igor A. Andriyash, Chi-Hao Pai, Jianfei Hua, Chaojie Zhang, Fei Li, Yipeng Wu, Zan Nie, Warren B. Mori, Wei Lu, Victor Malka, Chan Joshi, "Ion acceleration with an ultra-intense two-frequency laser tweezer," New J. Phys. 22, 052002 (2020).
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