Enhanced laser-radiation-pressure-driven proton acceleration by moving focusing electric-fields in a foil-in-cone target

Abstract

A foil-in-cone target is proposed to enhance stable laser-radiation-pressure-driven proton acceleration by avoiding the beam degradation in whole stage of acceleration. Two and threedimensional particle-in-cell simulations demonstrate that the guiding cone can substantially improve the spectral and spatial properties of the ion beam and lead to better preservation of the beam quality. This can be attributed to the focusing effect of the radial sheath electric fields formed on the inner walls of the cone, which co-move with the accelerated foil and effectively suppress the undesirable transverse explosion of the foil. It is shown that, by using a transversely Gaussian laser pulse with intensity of $2.74 Â 10 22 W=cm 2 , a quasi-monoenergetic proton beam with a peak energy of $1.5 GeV/u, density $10n c , and transverse size $1k 0 can be obtained.

Enhanced laser radiation pressure acceleration of protons with a gold cone-capillary

“…Thus, the protons can be accelerated to higher energy, corresponding to a higher monoenergetic peak structure in Here the electric field is normalized by m e ωc/e. transverse, which has been proposed by Zou et al [30]. This results in a balance between the electric field and the magnetic field [33,34] that leads to the collimation and guidance of the electrons along the cone or/and cone-capillary.…”

“…In order to suppress the instability, many solutions are presented and studied in detail like of with a properly tailored laser [24,27] or/and with a shaped foil target [28,29], etc.. Recently Zou et al [30] proposed first a cone target used to focus laser and guide fast electrons in FI [31]. While the cone target can suppress the transverse expansion by a co-moving focusing electric field and achieve a better beam quality, however, the proton beams will diffuse following the laser 3 field when they fly out from the right exit of the cone.…”

Control of target-normal-sheath-accelerated protons from a guiding cone

“…18 Unfortunately, the laser intensity required is still beyond capability of current laser facilities. Now, we focus on the control of TNSA protons by using such a hollow cone to encircle a thicker solid target, as sketched in Fig.…”

Radiation from laser-microplasma-waveguide interactions in the ultra-intense regime

“…We emphasis that the (i) small radius (< 10 microns) and (ii) relatively-long length (∼ several hundreds of microns) are two important features which distinguish the MPW considered in this paper with many other studies [5,12,13,25,[39][40][41] concerning electron acceleration in overdense plasma channels. The former (i) gives rise to significant longitudinal electric fields (by TM modes), so that the EM waves inside the MPW cannot be considered as plane wave any more; and the latter (ii) provides enough distance for the TM modes to dominate the electron acceleration process.…”

“…It has been reported experimentally that significant modifications to many physical processes, including the acceleration of particles [4,9] and secondary radiations [3,7], are induced by these guiding structures. Nevertheless, simulations have also suggested many interesting phenomenons [5,[10][11][12][13] can be achieved with the development of laser technology in the near future that may lead to diverse potential applications in fundamental science, industry, and medicine.…”