Related papers: Laser Accelerated Ions from a Shock Compressed Gas…
Intense laser acceleration of ions is inherently difficult due to the velocity mismatch between laser pulses moving at the speed of light and slowly moving massive ions. Instead of directly accelerating the ions, current approaches rely on…
We report on reproducible shock acceleration from irradiation of a $\lambda = 10$ $\mu$m CO$_2$ laser on optically shaped H$_2$ and He gas targets. A low energy laser prepulse ($I\lesssim10^{14}\, {\rm Wcm^{-2}}$) was used to drive a blast…
This research demonstrates high-repetition-rate laser-accelerated ion beams via dual, intersecting, counterpropagating laser-driven blast waves to precisely shape underdense gas into long-lived near-critical density targets. The collision…
We investigate by particle-in-cell simulations in two and three dimensions the laser-plasma interaction and the proton acceleration in multilayer targets where a low density "near-critical" layer of a few micron thickness is added on the…
In the past two decades, laser-accelerated ion sources and their applications have been intensely researched. Recently, it has been shown through experiments that proton beams with characteristics comparable to those obtained with solid…
Longitudinal ion acceleration from high-intensity (I ~ 10^20 Wcm^-2) laser interactions with helium gas jet targets (n_e ~ 0.04 n_c) have been observed. The ion beam has a maximum energy for He^2+ of approximately 40 MeV and was directional…
Ion acceleration from gaseous targets driven by relativistic-intensity lasers was demonstrated as early as the late 90s, yet most of the experiments conducted to date have involved picosecond-duration, Nd:glass lasers operating at low…
We report on the experimental studies of laser driven ion acceleration from double-layer target where a near-critical density target with a few-micron thickness is coated in front of a nanometer thin diamond-like carbon foil. A significant…
We study numerically the mechanisms of proton acceleration in gas-foil targets driven by an ultraintense femtosecond laser pulse. The target consists of a near-critical-density hydrogen gas layer of a few tens of microns attached to a solid…
We report on an experimental study of proton acceleration by intense laser irradiation of micrometric bar targets, whose dimensions are transversely immersed in the laser focal volume and are longitudinally smaller than half its wavelength.…
Ion acceleration resulting from the interaction of 11 fs laser pulses of ~35 mJ energy with ultrahigh contrast (<10^-10), and 10^19 W/cm^2 peak intensity with foil targets made of various materials and thicknesses at normal (0-degree) and…
The interaction of high intensity laser radiation with mass-limited target exhibits significant enhancement of the ion acceleration when the target is surrounded by an underdense plasma corona, as seen in numerical simulations. The…
We have investigated proton acceleration in the forward direction from a near-critical density hydrogen gas jet target irradiated by a high intensity (10^18 W/cm^2), short-pulse (5 ps) laser with wavelength of 1.054 micron. We observe the…
This paper overviews experimental and numerical results on acceleration of narrow energy spread ion beams by an electrostatic collisionless shockwave driven by 1 um (Omega EP) and 10 um (UCLA Neptune Laboratory) lasers in near critical…
Laser-driven ion acceleration is an attractive technique for compact high-energy ion sources. Currently, among various physical and technical issues to be solved, the boost of ion energy and the reduction of energy spread represent the key…
The acceleration of ions from ultra-thin foils has been investigated using 250 TW, sub-ps laser pulses, focused on target at intensities up to $3\times10^{20} \Wcm2$. The ion spectra show the appearance of narrow band features for proton…
Collision of laser-driven subrelativistic high density ion flows provides a way to create extremely compressed ion conglomerates and study their properties. This paper presents a theoretical study of the electrodynamic implosion of ions…
We present a parametric study based on 1-D particle-in-cell (PIC) simulations conducted with the objective of understanding the interaction of intense lasers with near-critical non-uniform density gas targets. Specifically, we aim to find…
The extreme electric fields created in high-intensity laser-plasma interactions could generate energetic ions far more compactly than traditional accelerators. Despite this promise, laser-plasma accelerators have remained stagnant at…
We demonstrate laser-driven Helium ion acceleration with cut-off energies above 25 MeV and peaked ion number above $10^8$ /MeV for 22(2) MeV projectiles from near-critical density gas jet targets. We employed shock gas jet nozzles at the…