Spin polarized proton beam generation from gas-jet targets by intense laser pulses
Abstract
A method of generating spin polarized proton beams from a gas jet by using a multi-petawatt laser is put forward. With currently available techniques of producing pre-polarized monatomic gases from photodissociated hydrogen halide molecules and petawatt lasers, proton beams with energy ~ 50 MeV and ~ 80 % polarization are proved to be obtained. Two-stage acceleration and spin dynamics of protons are investigated theoretically and by means of fully self-consistent three dimensional particle-in-cell simulations. Our results predict the dependence of the beam polarization on the intensity of the driving laser pulse. Generation of bright energetic polarized proton beams would open a domain of polarization studies with laser driven accelerators, and have potential application to enable effective detection in explorations of quantum chromodynamics.
Keywords
Cite
@article{arxiv.2001.11398,
title = {Spin polarized proton beam generation from gas-jet targets by intense laser pulses},
author = {Luling Jin and Meng Wen and Xiaomei Zhang and Anna Hützen and Johannes Thomas and Markus Büscher and Baifei Shen},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2001.11398},
year = {2020}
}