Efficient quasi-monoenergetic ion beams from laser-driven relativistic plasmas

Palaniyappan, S.; Huang, Chengkun; Gautier, D. C.; Hamilton, C. E.; Santiago, M. A. M.; Kreuzer, Christian; Sefkow, A. B.; Shah, Rahul; Fernández, Juan

doi:10.1038/ncomms10170

Cited by 92 publications

(89 citation statements)

References 65 publications

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“…These foils delivered narrow ion-energy peaks with relatively high laser-ion conversion efficiency and a smaller beam divergence (up to 17° HWHM) 48 . The dominant charge state was Al 11+ along with the ubiquitous proton beam from target-surface impurities and a small Al 12+ component.…”

Section: Laser-driven Intense Ion-beams With Narrow Energy Spreadsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Laser-plasmas in the relativistic-transparency regime: Science and applications

et al. 2017

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Laser-plasma interactions in the novel regime of relativistically induced transparency (RIT) have been harnessed to generate intense ion beams efficiently with average energies exceeding 10 MeV/nucleon (>100 MeV for protons) at “table-top” scales in experiments at the LANL Trident Laser. By further optimization of the laser and target, the RIT regime has been extended into a self-organized plasma mode. This mode yields an ion beam with much narrower energy spread while maintaining high ion energy and conversion efficiency. This mode involves self-generation of persistent high magnetic fields (∼104 T, according to particle-in-cell simulations of the experiments) at the rear-side of the plasma. These magnetic fields trap the laser-heated multi-MeV electrons, which generate a high localized electrostatic field (∼0.1 T V/m). After the laser exits the plasma, this electric field acts on a highly structured ion-beam distribution in phase space to reduce the energy spread, thus separating acceleration and energy-spread reduction. Thus, ion beams with narrow energy peaks at up to 18 MeV/nucleon are generated reproducibly with high efficiency (≈5%). The experimental demonstration has been done with 0.12 PW, high-contrast, 0.6 ps Gaussian 1.053 μm laser pulses irradiating planar foils up to 250 nm thick at 2–8 × 1020 W/cm2. These ion beams with co-propagating electrons have been used on Trident for uniform volumetric isochoric heating to generate and study warm-dense matter at high densities. These beam plasmas have been directed also at a thick Ta disk to generate a directed, intense point-like Bremsstrahlung source of photons peaked at ∼2 MeV and used it for point projection radiography of thick high density objects. In addition, prior work on the intense neutron beam driven by an intense deuterium beam generated in the RIT regime has been extended. Neutron spectral control by means of a flexible converter-disk design has been demonstrated, and the neutron beam has been used for point-projection imaging of thick objects. The plans and prospects for further improvements and applications are also discussed.

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Section: Laser-driven Intense Ion-beams With Narrow Energy Spreadsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Laser-plasmas in the relativistic-transparency regime: Science and applications

et al. 2017

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“…19 Time-integrated measurement of ion spectra alone is insufficient to resolve the key underlying dynamics required to determine which mechanism dominates for given target and laser pulse parameters. Moreover, recent work has shown that multiple acceleration mechanisms can occur over the duration of the laser pulse interaction with an ultrathin foil target.…”

Section: Intra-pulse Transition Between Ion Acceleration Mechanisms Imentioning

confidence: 99%

Intra-pulse transition between ion acceleration mechanisms in intense laser-foil interactions

et al. 2016

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Multiple ion acceleration mechanisms can occur when an ultrathin foil is irradiated with an intense laser pulse, with the dominant mechanism changing over the course of the interaction. Measurement of the spatial-intensity distribution of the beam of energetic protons is used to investigate the transition from radiation pressure acceleration to transparency-driven processes. It is shown numerically that radiation pressure drives an increased expansion of the target ions within the spatial extent of the laser focal spot, which induces a radial deflection of relatively low energy sheath-accelerated protons to form an annular distribution. Through variation of the target foil thickness, the opening angle of the ring is shown to be correlated to the point in time transparency occurs during the interaction and is maximized when it occurs at the peak of the laser intensity profile. Corresponding experimental measurements of the ring size variation with target thickness exhibit the same trends and provide insight into the intra-pulse laser-plasma evolution.

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“…Aluminum foil with proper thickness could be applied to spatially separate the ion trajectories of different species. 12 Alternatively, a pair of electrodes can be added to the 2DpWASto provide a transverse deflection which also spatially separates the proton and heavier ion tracks, just functions as a multi-pinhole TP-Spec. Fig.…”

Section: Experiments and Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…By replacing the pinhole with a slit or a row of pinholes, one-dimensional (1D) angular-resolved energy distributions of proton beams were measured. [9][10][11][12] This design was proposed to have imaging capability. 9 The energy spectrum, spatial distribution, and angular distribution of the proton beam were found to be inherently correlated with each other using the novel spectrometer design.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%