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Theoretical Study of the Efficient Ion Acceleration Driven by Petawatt-Class Lasers via Stable Radiation Pressure Acceleration

Authors :
Meng Liu
Jia-Xiang Gao
Wei-Min Wang
Yu-Tong Li
Source :
Applied Sciences, Vol 12, Iss 6, p 2924 (2022)
Publication Year :
2022
Publisher :
MDPI AG, 2022.

Abstract

Laser-driven radiation pressure acceleration (RPA) is one of the most promising candidates to achieve quasi-monoenergetic ion beams. In particular, many petawatt systems are under construction or in the planning phase. Here, a stable radiation pressure acceleration (SRPA) scheme is investigated, in which a circularly-polarized (CP) laser pulse illuminates a CH2 thin foil followed by a large-scale near-critical-density (NCD) plasma. In the laser-foil interaction, a longitudinal charge-separated electric field is excited to accelerate ions together with the heating of electrons. The heating can be alleviated by the continuous replenishment of cold electrons of the NCD plasma as the laser pulse and the pre-accelerated ions enter into the NCD plasma. With the relativistically transparent propagation of the pulse in the NCD plasma, the accelerating field with large amplitude is persistent, and its propagating speed becomes relatively low, which further accelerates the pre-accelerated ions. Our particle-in-cell (PIC) simulation shows that the SRPA scheme works efficiently with the laser intensity ranging from 6.85×1021 W cm−2 to 4.38×1023 W cm−2, e.g., a well-collimated quasi-monoenergetic proton beam with peak energy ∼1.2 GeV can be generated by a 2.74 × 1022 W cm−2 pulse, and the energy conversion efficiency from the laser pulse to the proton beam is about 16%. The QED effects have slight influence on this SRPA scheme.

Details

Language :
English
ISSN :
20763417
Volume :
12
Issue :
6
Database :
Directory of Open Access Journals
Journal :
Applied Sciences
Publication Type :
Academic Journal
Accession number :
edsdoj.87ebedaa4c674516bc51fe8eec6c5e4a
Document Type :
article
Full Text :
https://doi.org/10.3390/app12062924