Related papers: Ion acceleration by superintense laser-plasma inte…
Ion beams generated with ultra-intense lasers-plasma accelerators hold promises to provide compact and affordable beams of relativistic ions. One of the most efficient acceleration setups was demonstrated to be direct acceleration by the…
Collisionless shock acceleration of protons and C$^{6+}$ ions has been achieved by the interaction of a 10$^{20}$ W/cm$^2$, 1 $\mu$m laser with a near-critical density plasma. Ablation of the initially solid density target by a secondary…
We demonstrate a scheme for enhanced proton acceleration from near-critical-density targets by splitting a laser pulse into a linearly and a circularly polarized laser pulse. The combination of two laser pulses generates a shock wave as…
We present the process of ion acceleration using ultra-thin foils irradiated by elliptically polarized, high-intensity laser pulses. Recently, efficient generation of monoenergetic ion beams was introduced using the concept of laser-ion…
We present an experimental demonstration of the efficient acceleration of electrons beyond 60 MeV using micro-channel plasma targets. We employed a high-contrast, 2.5 J, 32 fs short pulse laser interacting with a 5 \mu m inner diameter, 300…
A future plasma based linear collider has the potential to reach unprecedented energies and transform our understanding of high energy physics. The extremely dense beams in such a device would cause the plasma ions to fall toward the axis.…
The propagation of a superintense laser pulse in an underdense, inhomogeneous plasma has been studied numerically by two-dimensional particle-in-cell simulations on a time scale extending up to several picoseconds. The effects of the ion…
Ultra-short high-power lasers can deliver extreme light intensities ($\ge 10^{20}$ W/cm$^2$ and $\leq 30 f$s) and drive large amplitude Surface Plasma Wave (SPW) at over-dense plasma surface. The resulting current of energetic electron has…
How fast can a laser pulse ionize an atom? We address this question by considering pulses that carry a fixed time-integrated energy per-area, and finding those that achieve the double requirement of maximizing the ionization that they…
Calculations on the dynamics of ions and electrons in near-infrared laser fields at intensities up to $3 \times 10^{23}$ W/cm$^2$ are presented. We explore the acceleration of ions in a laser focus by conservation of canonical momentum…
Ultra intense lasers are a promising source of energetic ions for various applications. An interesting approach described in Ferri et al. 2019 argues from Particle-in-Cell simulations that using two laser pulses of half energy (half…
The interaction of intense, ultra-short laser pulses with nanostructures offers promising avenues for spatiotemporal light control. While enhanced optical transmission through subwavelength apertures has been extensively studied in the…
When a circularly polarized laser pulse interacts with a foil target, there are three stages: pre-hole-boring, hole-boring and the light sail acceleration. We study the electron and ion dynamics in the first stage and find the minimum foil…
We review recent PIC simulation results which show that double-sided irradiation of a thin over- dense plasma slab by ultra-intense laser pulses from both sides can lead to sustained comoving acceleration of surface electrons to energies…
Efficient coupling of intense laser pulses to solid-density matter is critical to many applications including ion acceleration for cancer therapy. At relativistic intensities, the focus has been mainly on investigating various laser beams…
The dynamics of magnetic fields with amplitude of several tens of Megagauss, generated at both sides of a solid target irradiated with a high intensity (? 1019W/cm2) picosecond laser pulse, has been spatially and temporally resolved using a…
Laser-plasma accelerators produce electric fields of the order of 100 GV/m, more than 1000 times larger than radio-frequency accelerators. Thanks to this unique field strength, they appear as a promising path to generate electron beams…
Due to the high computational cost of 3D particle-in-cell (PIC) simulations, lower-dimensional (2D or 1D) simulations are frequently used in their place. Our work shows that when modeling high-intensity laser ion acceleration, simulation…
Laser-plasma physics has developed rapidly over the past few decades as high-power lasers have become both increasingly powerful and more widely available. Early experimental and numerical research in this field was restricted to…
In this article, we concentrate on the basic physics of relativistic plasma wave accelerators. The generation of relativistic plasma waves by intense lasers or electron beams in low-density plasmas is important in the quest for producing…