Related papers: Optimized laser ion acceleration at the relativist…
In this work, we investigate the application of the plasma shutters for heavy ion acceleration driven by a high-intensity laser pulse. We use particle-in-cell (PIC) and hydrodynamic simulations. The laser pulse, transmitted through the…
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…
When the ions are accelerated by the radiation pressure of the laser pulse, their velocity can not exceed the laser group velocity, in the case when it is less than the speed of light in vacuum. This is demonstrated in two cases…
Heating and ionization are among the most fundamental processes in relativistic laser--solid interactions; however, their spatiotemporal evolution remains challenging to capture experimentally. Here we present detailed diagnosis of…
We propose a hybrid laser-driven ion acceleration scheme using a combination target of a solid foil and a density-tailored background plasma. In the first stage, a sub-relativistic proton beam can be generated by the radiation pressure…
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…
There currently exists a number of different schemes for laser based ion acceleration in the literature. Some of these schemes are also partly overlapping, making a clear distinction between the schemes difficult in certain parameter…
Laser-plasma accelerators offer a compact means of producing high-energy electron beams, but their performance is fundamentally limited by dephasing between the accelerated electrons and the plasma wave. To overcome this limitation, we…
Ion acceleration using a laser pulse irradiating a thin disk target is examined using three-dimensional and two-dimensional particle-in-cell simulations. A laser pulse of $620$ TW, with an intensity of $5\times 10^{21}$ W/cm$^{2}$ and a…
Interaction of a high intensity short laser pulse with near-critical plasmas allows to achieve extremely high coupling efficiency and transfer laser energy to energetic ions. One dimensional Particle-In-Cell (PIC) simulations are considered…
The ability of laser cooling for relativistic ion beams is investigated. For this purpose, the excitation of relativistic ions with a continuous wave and a pulsed laser is analyzed, utilizing the optical Bloch equations. The laser cooling…
Acceleration of electrons in vacuum directly by intense laser fields, often termed vacuum laser acceleration (VLA), holds great promise for the creation of compact sources of high-charge, ultrashort, relativistic electron bunches. However,…
This dissertation explores the interaction between high-intensity lasers and plasmas to accelerate electrons and produce radiation via experimental and computational efforts. The laser pulses used in this dissertation have ultrashort…
We study the onset of electron heating in intense laser-solid interactions and its impact on the spectral quality of radiation pressure accelerated ions in both hole boring and light sail regimes. Two- and three-dimensional particle-in-cell…
Using three-dimensional particle-in-cell simulations, we further investigate the electron and ion acceleration from femtosecond laser-plasma peeler scheme which was proposed in our recent paper (Shen et al 2021 Phys. Rev. X 11 041002). In…
The ion acceleration driven by a laser pulse at intensity $I = 10^{20} - 10^{22} $W/cm$^2\times(\mu$m$/\lambda)^2$ from a double layer target is investigated with multi-parametric Particle-in-Cell (PIC) simulations. For targets with a wide…
We present the experimental results on ion acceleration by petawatt femtosecond laser solid interaction and explore strategies to enhance ion energy. The irradiation of micrometer thick (0.2 - 6.0 micron) Al foils with a virtually…
Ion beam has been used in cancer treatment, and has a unique preferable feature to deposit its main energy inside a human body so that cancer cell could be killed by the ion beam. However, conventional ion accelerator tends to be huge in…
Magnetic Vortex Acceleration (MVA) from near critical density targets is one of the promising schemes of laser-driven ion acceleration. 3D particle-in-cell simulations are used to explore a more extensive laser-target parameter space than…
Laser-driven ion accelerators have the advantages of compact size, high density, and short bunch duration over conventional accelerators. Nevertheless, it is still challenging to simultaneously enhance the yield and quality of laser-driven…