Laser-driven multi-MeV high-purity proton acceleration via anisotropic ambipolar expansion of micron-scale hydrogen clusters

Abstract Multi-MeV high-purity proton acceleration by using a hydrogen cluster target irradiated with repetitive, relativistic intensity laser pulses has been demonstrated. Statistical analysis of hundreds of data sets highlights the existence of markedly high energy protons produced from the laser-irradiated clusters with micron-scale diameters. The spatial distribution of the accelerated protons is found to be anisotropic, where the higher energy protons are preferentially accelerated along the laser propagation direction due to the relativistic effect. These features are supported by three-dimensional (3D) particle-in-cell (PIC) simulations, which show that directional, higher energy protons are generated via the anisotropic ambipolar expansion of the micron-scale clusters. The number of protons accelerating along the laser propagation direction is found to be as high as 1.6 $$\pm \,{0.3}$$ ± 0.3 $$\times$$ × 10 $$^9$$ 9 /MeV/sr/shot with an energy of 2.8 $$\pm \,{1.9}$$ ± 1.9 MeV, indicating that laser-driven proton acceleration using the micron-scale hydrogen clusters is promising as a compact, repetitive, multi-MeV high-purity proton source for various applications.