Accelerating and guiding of C6+ by an intense laser irradiating on a foil target with a tapered channel

Abstract

A novel scheme with a tapered channel attached to an ultra-thin carbon foil is proposed to accelerate and guide carbon ions via breakout afterburner mechanism. Also, the problems involved are investigated by using two-dimensional particle-in-cell simulations. It is demonstrated that the tapered channel can efficiently accelerate and guide carbon ions and result in a much better quality beam with an order of magnitude higher in density and 22% larger in cut-off energy than that without the tapered channel. The enhanced reasons are analyzed in detail, which are mainly attributed to the guidance of the longitudinal electric field and the focus of the transverse electric field, as well as the convergence effect of the tapered channel. All of them are certified to guide greatly carbon ions to move along the longitudinal direction. Besides, during the simulation time, the ion beam with a tapered channel can remain eight times smaller in divergence angle than that without the tapered channel. Such a target may be beneficial to many applications such as ion fast ignition in inertial fusion, high-energy physics, and proton therapy.

Beam quality improvement in the later stage of radiation pressure acceleration

“…However, the ion beams generated by these schemes do not always meet the needs of practical applications. As far as we know, some numerical studies aimed at designing target structure have improved the beam quality of TNAS or BOA protons, for example, using a holed target or a plasma channel [27][28][29][30].…”