"Light Sail" Acceleration Revisited
Plasma Physics
2010-10-12 v2
Abstract
The dynamics of the acceleration of ultrathin foil targets by the radiation pressure of superintense, circularly polarized laser pulses is investigated by analytical modeling and particle-in-cell simulations. By addressing self-induced transparency and charge separation effects, it is shown that for "optimal" values of the foil thickness only a thin layer at the rear side is accelerated by radiation pressure. The simple "Light Sail" model gives a good estimate of the energy per nucleon, but overestimates the conversion efficiency of laser energy into monoenergetic ions.
Cite
@article{arxiv.0905.2068,
title = {"Light Sail" Acceleration Revisited},
author = {Andrea Macchi and Silvia Veghini and Francesco Pegoraro},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:0905.2068},
year = {2010}
}
Comments
4 pages, 3 figures. Second version modified and improved