Efficient ion acceleration by collective laser-driven electron dynamics with ultra-thin foil targets
Plasma Physics
2015-05-14 v1
Abstract
Experiments on ion acceleration by irradiation of ultra-thin diamond-like carbon (DLC) foils, with thicknesses well below the skin depth, irradiated with laser pulses of ultra-high contrast and linear polarization, are presented. A maximum energy of 13MeV for protons and 71MeV for carbon ions is observed with a conversion efficiency of > 10%. Two-dimensional particle-in-cell (PIC) simulations reveal that the increase in ion energies can be attributed to a dominantly collective rather than thermal motion of the foil electrons, when the target becomes transparent for the incident laser pulse.
Cite
@article{arxiv.0909.2334,
title = {Efficient ion acceleration by collective laser-driven electron dynamics with ultra-thin foil targets},
author = {S. Steinke and A. Henig and M. Schnürer and T. Sokollik and P. V. Nickles and D. Jung and D. Kiefer and J. Schreiber and T. Tajima and X. Q. Yan and J. Meyer-ter-Vehn and M. Hegelich and W. Sandner and D. Habs},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:0909.2334},
year = {2015}
}