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Register a new userCollisionless shock acceleration of narrow energy spread ion beams from mixed species plasmas using 1 $mu$m lasers
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Collisionless shock acceleration of protons and C$^{6+}$ ions has been achieved by the interaction of a 10$^{20}$ W/cm$^2$, 1 $mu$m laser with a near-critical density plasma. Ablation of the initially solid density target by a secondary laser allowed for systematic control of the plasma profile. This enabled the production of beams with peaked spectra with energies of 10-18 MeV/a.m.u. and energy spreads of 10-20$%$ with up to 3x10$^9$ particles within these narrow spectral features. The narrow energy spread and similar velocity of ion species with different charge-to-mass ratio are consistent with acceleration by the moving potential of a shock wave. Particle-in-cell simulations show shock accelerated beams of protons and C$^{6+}$ ions with energy distributions consistent with the experiments. Simulations further indicate the plasma profile determines the trade-off between the beam charge and energy and that with additional target optimization narrow energy spread beams exceeding 100 MeV/a.m.u. can be produced using the same laser conditions.
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The generation of fast ion beams in the hole-boring radiation pressure acceleration by intense laser pulses has been studied for targets with different ion components. We find that the oscillation of the longitudinal electric field for accelerating ions can be effectively suppressed by using a two-ion-species target, because fast ions from a two-ion-species target are distributed into more bunches and each bunch bears less charge. Consequently, the energy spread of ion beams generated in the hole-boring radiation pressure acceleration can be greatly reduced down to 3.7% according to our numerical simulation.
We report stable laser-driven proton beam acceleration from ultrathin foils consisting of two ion species: heavier carbon ions and lighter protons. Multi-dimensional particle-in-cell (PIC) simulations show that the radiation pressure leads to very fast and complete spatial separation of the species. The laser pulse does not penetrate the carbon ion layer, avoiding the proton Rayleigh-Taylor-like (RT) instability. Ultimately, the carbon ions are heated and spread extensively in space. In contrast, protons always ride on the front of the carbon ion cloud, forming a compact high quality bunch. We introduce a simple three-interface model to interpret the instability suppression in the proton layer. The model is backed by simulations of various compound foils such as carbon-deuterium (C-D) and carbon-tritium (C-T) foils. The effects of the carbon ions charge state on proton acceleration are also investigated. It is shown that with the decrease of the carbon ion charge state, both the RT-like instability and the Coulomb explosion degrade the energy spectrum of the protons. Finally, full 3D simulations are performed to demonstrate the robustness of the stable two-ion-species regime.
Coulomb implosion mechanism of the negatively charged ion acceleration in laser plasmas is proposed. When a cluster target is irradiated by an intense laser pulse and the Coulomb explosion of positively charged ions occurs, the negative ions are accelerated inward. The maximum energy of negative ions is several times lower than that of positive ions. The theoretical description and Particle-in-Cell simulation of the Coulomb implosion mechanism and the evidence of the negative ion acceleration in the experiments on the high intensity laser pulse interaction with the cluster targets are presented.
Laser-driven collisonless electrostatic shock formation and the subsequent ion acceleration have been studied in near critical density plasmas. Particle-in-cell simulations show that both the speed of laser-driven collisionless electrostatic shock and the energies of shock-accelerated ions can be greatly enhanced due to fast laser propagation in near critical density plasmas. However, a response time longer than tens of laser wave cycles is required before the shock formation in a near critical density plasma, in contrast to the quick shock formation in a highly overdense target. More important, we find that some ions can be reflected by the collisionless shock even if the electrostatic potential jump across the shock is smaller than the ion kinetic energy in the shock frame, which seems against the conventional ion-reflection condition. These anomalous ion reflections are attributed to the strongly time-oscillating electric field accompanying laser-driven collisionless shock in a near critical density plasma.
Laser-ion acceleration with ultra-short pulse, PW-class lasers is dominated by non-thermal, intra-pulse plasma dynamics. The presence of multiple ion species or multiple charge states in targets leads to characteristic modulations and even mono-energetic features, depending on the choice of target material. As spectral signatures of generated ion beams are frequently used to characterize underlying acceleration mechanisms, thermal, multi-fluid descriptions require a revision for predictive capabilities and control in next-generation particle beam sources. We present an analytical model with explicit inter-species interactions, supported by extensive ab initio simulations. This enables us to derive important ensemble properties from the spectral distribution resulting from those multi-species effects for arbitrary mixtures. We further propose a potential experimental implementation with a novel cryogenic target, delivering jets with variable mixtures of hydrogen and deuterium. Free from contaminants and without strong influence of hardly controllable processes such as ionization dynamics, this would allow a systematic realization of our predictions for the multi-species effect.
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