Enhanced radiation pressure-assisted acceleration by temporally tuned counter-propagating pulses

• Within the last decade, laser-ion acceleration has become a field of broad interest. The possibility to generate short proton- or heavy ion bunches with an energy of a few tens of MeV by table-top laser systems could open new opportunities for medical or technical applications. Nevertheless, today's laser-acceleration schemes lead mainly to a temperature-like energy distribution of the accelerated ions, a big disadvantage compared to mono-energetic beams from conventional accelerators. Recent results 111 of laser-ion acceleration using radiation-pressure appear promising to overcome this drawback. In this paper, we demonstrate the influence of a second counter-propagating laser pulse interacting with a nm-thick target, creating a well defined pre-plasma. (C) 2013 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

Subject headings

NATURVETENSKAP  -- Fysik -- Acceleratorfysik och instrumentering (hsv//swe)

NATURAL SCIENCES  -- Physical Sciences -- Accelerator Physics and Instrumentation (hsv//eng)

Keyword

Plasma physics

Laser ion acceleration

Radiation pressure-assisted

acceleration

Publication and Content Type

art (subject category)

ref (subject category)