Transport and energy selection of laser generated protons for postacceleration with a compact linac

Abstract

Laser accelerated proton beams have a considerable potential for various applications including oncological therapy. However, the most consolidated target normal sheath acceleration regime based on irradiation of solid targets provides an exponential energy spectrum with a significant divergence. The low count number at the cutoff energy seriously limits at present its possible use. One realistic scenario for the near future is offered by hybrid schemes. The use of transport lines for collimation and energy selection has been considered. We present here a scheme based on a high field pulsed solenoid and collimators which allows one to select a beam suitable for injection at 30 MeV into a compact linac in order to double its energy while preserving a significant intensity. The results are based on a fully 3D simulation starting from laser acceleration.

Focusing and transport of high-intensity multi-MeV proton bunches from a compact laser-driven source

“…Over the past years, numerous experimental investigations on the different facets of TNSA as well as simulation studies and theoretical approaches [4,5] contributed to the deeper understanding of the mechanism and increasingly raised interest in the field. There is a wide and growing range of applications for these beams, e.g., already today the creation of warm dense matter [6][7][8], proton imaging [9], or the creation of bright neutron sources [10,11], and possibly in the future proton fast ignition [12], clinical applications [13,14], or high-intensity ion sources in general, in some cases combined with a postacceleration stage [15,16]. Special interest is given to the application as a diagnostic tool for high density matter, which is foreseen for experiments of the HEDgeHOB collaboration at the FAIR facility [17].…”

Commissioning of a compact laser-based proton beam line for high intensity bunches around 10 MeV

“…They were able to build an integrated test beam line at 1 Hz for protons up to 2.2 MeV energy with an energy spread of 5% and medium particle numbers of about 5 × 10 6 protons in the final bunch. Apart from this Japanese group, interest in such a beam line arises now in other groups around the world, too [18,19].…”

High-Energy and High-Quality Ion beams in Light Sail Acceleration

“…This allows to generate ion beams that simultaneously exhibit high-energy per nucleon and a high-quality quasi-monochromatic spectrum. Finally, we mention that further increase of the ion energy per nucleon and simultaneous improvement of the monochromatic features of the ion spectrum are attainable with hybrid schemes where the first RPA stage is followed by a second stage of energy selection and eventually further acceleration with a compact linac [51].…”