No Arabic abstract
Three-dimensional particle-in-cell simulation is used to investigate the witness proton acceleration in underdense plasma with a short intense Laguerre-Gaussian (LG) laser pulse. Driven by the LG10 laser pulse, a special bubble with an electron pillar on the axis is formed, in which protons can be well-confined by the generated transversal focusing field and accelerated by the longitudinal wakefield. The risk of scattering prior to acceleration with a Gaussian laser pulse in underdense plasma is avoided, and protons are accelerated stably to much higher energy. In simulation, a proton beam has been accelerated to 7 GeV from 1 GeV in underdense tritium plasma driven by a 2.14x1022 W/cm2 LG10 laser pulse.
We investigate the target normal sheath acceleration of protons in thin aluminum targets irradiated at relativistic intensity by two time-separated ultrashort (35 fs) laser pulses. For identical laser pulses and target thicknesses of 3 and 6 $mu$m, we observe experimentally that the second pulse boosts the maximum energy and charge of the proton beam produced by the first pulse for time delays below $sim0.6-1$ ps. By using two-dimensional particle-in-cell simulations we examine the variation of the proton energy spectra with respect to the time-delay between the two pulses. We demonstrate that the expansion of the target front surface caused by the first pulse significantly enhances the hot-electron generation by the second pulse arriving after a few hundreds of fs time delay. This enhancement, however, does not suffice to further accelerate the fastest protons driven by the first pulse once three-dimensional quenching effects have set in. This implies a limit to the maximum time delay that leads to proton energy enhancement, which we theoretically determine.
We develop an analytical model for ultraintense attosecond pulse emission in the highly relativistic laser-plasma interaction. In this model, the attosecond pulse is emitted by a strongly compressed electron layer around the instant when the layer transverse current changes the sign and its longitudinal velocity approaches the maximum. The emitted attosecond pulse has a broadband exponential spectrum and a stabilized constant spectral phase $psi(omega)=pmpi/2-psi_{A_m}$. The waveform of the attosecond pulse is also given explicitly, to our knowledge, for the first time. We validate the analytical model via particle-in-cell (PIC) simulations for both normal and oblique incidence. Based on this model, we highlight the potential to generate an isolated ultraintense phase-stabilized attosecond pulse
The recent experimental data of anomalous magnetic moments strongly indicate the existence of new physics beyond the standard model. An energetic $mu^+$ beam is a potential option to the expected neutrino factories, the future muon colliders and the $mu$SR(the spin rotation, resonance and relaxation) technology. It is proposed a prompt acceleration scheme of the $mu^+$ beam in a donut wakefield driven by a shaped Laguerre-Gaussian (LG) laser pulse. The forward part of the donut wakefield can accelerate and also focus positive particle beams effectively. The LG laser is shaped by a near-critical-density plasma. The shaped LG laser has the shorter rise time and can enlarge the acceleration field. The acceleration field driven by a shaped LG laser pulse is six times higher than that driven by a normal LG laser pulse. The simulation results show that the $ mu^+$ bunch can be accelerated from $200mathrm{MeV}$ to 2GeV and the transversal size of the $mu^+$ bunch is also focused from initial $omega_0=5mu m$ to $omega=1mu m$ within several picoseconds.
The future applications of the short-duration, multi-MeV ion beams produced in the interaction of high-intensity laser pulses with solid targets will require improvements in the conversion efficiency, peak ion energy, beam monochromaticity, and collimation. Regimes based on Radiation Pressure Acceleration (RPA) might be the dominant ones at ultrahigh intensities and be most suitable for specific applications. This regime may be reached already with present-day intensities using circularly polarized (CP) pulses thanks to the suppression of fast electron generation, so that RPA dominates over sheath acceleration at any intensity. We present a brief review of previous work on RPA with CP pulses and a few recent results. Parametric studies in one dimension were performed to identify the optimal thickness of foil targets for RPA and to study the effect of a short-scalelength preplasma. Three-dimensional simulations showed the importance of ``flat-top radial intensity profiles to minimise the rarefaction of thin targets and to address the issue of angular momentum conservation and absorption.
A remarkable ion energy increase is demonstrated by several-stage post-acceleration in a laser plasma interaction. Intense short-pulse laser generates a strong current by high-energy electrons accelerated, when an intense short-pulse laser illuminates a plasma target. The strong electric current creates a strong magnetic field along the high-energy electron current in plasma. During the increase phase of the magnetic field, the longitudinal inductive electric field is induced for the forward ion acceleration by the Faraday law. The inductive acceleration and the target-normal sheath acceleration in the multi stages provide a unique controllability of the ion energy. By the four-stage successive acceleration, our 2.5-dimensional particle-in-cell simulations demonstrate a remarkable increase in ion energy by a few hundreds of MeV; the maximum proton energy reaches 254MeV.