Laser-plasma proton acceleration with a combined gas-foil target
Abstract
Laser-plasma proton acceleration was investigated in the Target Normal Sheath Acceleration (TNSA) regime using a novel gas-foil target. The target is designed for reaching higher laser intensity at the foil plane owing to relativistic self-focusing and self compression of the pulse in the gas layer. Numerical 3D particle-in-cell (PIC) simulations were used to study pulse propagation in the gas, showing a nearly seven-fold increase in peak intensity. In the experiment, maximum proton energies showed high dependence on the energy transmission of the laser through the gas and a lesser dependence on the size and shape of the pulse. At high gas densities, laser energy depletion and pulse distortion suppressed proton energies. At low densities, self-focusing was observed and comparable or higher proton energies were measured with the gas.
Keywords
Cite
@article{arxiv.2007.14089,
title = {Laser-plasma proton acceleration with a combined gas-foil target},
author = {Dan Levy and Constantin Bernert and Martin Rehwald and Igor A. Andriyash and Stefan Assenbaum and Thomas Kluge and Eyal Kroupp and Lieselotte Obst-Huebl and Richard Pausch and Alexander Schultze-Makuch and Karl Zeil and Ulrich Schramm and Victor Malka},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2007.14089},
year = {2021}
}
Comments
8 pages, 6 figures