Related papers: Enabling pulse compression and proton acceleration…
Experimental results, supported by precise modelling, demonstrate optimisation of a plasma-based injector with intermediate laser pulse energy ($<1$ J), corresponding to a normalised vector potential $a_0 = 2.15$, using ionisation injection…
The generation of intense, femtosecond-scale X-ray pulses is crucial for probing matter under extreme temporal and field conditions. Current chirped-pulse amplification (CPA) techniques in free-electron lasers (FELs), however, face…
The radiation pressure of next generation ultra-high intensity ($>10^{23}$ W/cm$^{2}$) lasers could efficiently accelerate ions to GeV energies. However, nonlinear quantum-electrodynamic effects play an important role in the interaction of…
Proton acceleration by ultra-intense laser pulse irradiating a target with cross-section smaller than the laser spot size and connected to a parabolic density channel is investigated. The target splits the laser into two parallel…
An experimental program is currently underway at the National Ignition Facility (NIF) to compress deuterium and tritium (DT) fuel to densities and temperatures sufficient to achieve fusion and energy gain. The primary approach being…
Experiments on ion acceleration by irradiation of ultra-thin diamond-like carbon (DLC) foils, with thicknesses well below the skin depth, irradiated with laser pulses of ultra-high contrast and linear polarization, are presented. A maximum…
The acceleration of ions in the interaction of high intensity laser pulses with overdense plasmas is investigated with particle-in-cell simulations. For circular polarization of the laser pulses, high-density ion bunches moving into the…
Apart from maximizing the strength of optical electromagnetic fields achievable at high-intensity laser facilities, the collision of several phase-matched laser pulses has been theoretically identified as a trigger of and way to study…
Dense high-energy monoenergetic proton beams are vital for wide applications, thus modern laser-plasma-based ion acceleration methods are aiming to obtain high-energy proton beams with energy spread as low as possible. In this work, we put…
Two-dimensional Particle-In-Cell simulations are used to explore collisionless shock acceleration in the corona plasma surrounding the compressed core of an inertial confinement fusion pellet. We show that an intense laser pulse interacting…
Compact, stable, and versatile laser-driven ion sources hold great promise for applications ranging from medicine to materials science and fundamental physics. While single-shot sources have demonstrated favorable beam properties, including…
We clarify how intense laser irradiation leads to an enhancement of rare processes that may occur within atoms. Non-perturbative calculation using a coherent laser beam gives an exact, time dependent formula of the enhancement factor in the…
The interaction of ultraintense laser pulses with solids is largely affected by the plasma gradient at the vacuum-solid interface, which modifies the absorption and ultimately, controls the energy distribution function of heated electrons.…
A chirped laser pulse focused by a chromatic lens exhibits a dynamic, or "flying," focus in which the trajectory of the peak intensity decouples from the group velocity. In a medium, the flying focus can trigger an ionization front that…
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…
A target composition scheme to optimize the combined proton acceleration regime is presented and verified by two-dimensional particle-in-cell (2D PIC) simulations by using an ultra-intense circularly-polarized (CP) laser pulse irradiating…
Ultra-high field intensities are essential for developing high-energy-density physics and compact plasma accelerators, but they are essentially constrained by the limitations of focusing distance and nonlinear efficiency. We present a…
For the successful generation of ion-beam-driven high energy density matter and heavy ion fusion energy, intense ion beams must be transported and focused onto a target with small spot size. One of the successful approaches to achieve this…
We review recent PIC simulation results which show that double-sided irradiation of a thin over-dense plasma slab with ultra-intense laser pulses from both sides can lead to sustained comoving Poynting flux acceleration of electrons to…
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…