The radiation pressure acceleration (RPA) of charged particles has been considered a challenging task in laser particle acceleration. Laser-driven proton/ion acceleration has attracted considerable interests due to its underlying physics and potentia
l for applications such as high-energy density physics, ultrafast radiography, and cancer therapy. Among critical issues to overcome the biggest challenge is to produce energetic protons using an efficient acceleration mechanism. The proton acceleration by radiation pressure is considerably more efficient than the conventional target normal sheath acceleration driven by expanding hot electrons. Here we report the generation of 93-MeV proton beams achieved by applying 30-fs circularly polarized laser pulses with an intensity of 6.1 x 1020 W/cm2 to ultrathin targets. The radiation pressure acceleration was confirmed from the obtained optimal target thickness, quadratic energy scaling, polarization dependence, and 3D-PIC simulations. We expect this fast energy scaling to facilitate the realization of laser-driven proton/ion sources delivering stable and short particle beams for practical applications.
A computational method based on a first-principles multiscale simulation has been used for calculating the optical response and the ablation threshold of an optical material irradiated with an ultrashort intense laser pulse. The method employs Maxwel
ls equations to describe laser pulse propagation and time-dependent density functional theory to describe the generation of conduction band electrons in an optical medium. Optical properties, such as reflectance and absorption, were investigated for laser intensities in the range $10^{10} , mathrm{W/cm^{2}}$ to $2 times 10^{15} , mathrm{W/cm^{2}}$ based on the theory of generation and spatial distribution of the conduction band electrons. The method was applied to investigate the changes in the optical reflectance of $alpha$-quartz bulk, half-wavelength thin-film and quarter-wavelength thin-film and to estimate their ablation thresholds. Despite the adiabatic local density approximation used in calculating the exchange--correlation potential, the reflectance and the ablation threshold obtained from our method agree well with the previous theoretical and experimental results. The method can be applied to estimate the ablation thresholds for optical materials in general. The ablation threshold data can be used to design ultra-broadband high-damage-threshold coating structures.
Particle acceleration using ultraintense, ultrashort laser pulses is one of the most attractive topics in relativistic laser-plasma research. We report proton/ion acceleration in the intensity range of 5x1019 W/cm2 to 3.3x1020 W/cm2 by irradiating li
nearly polarized, 30-fs, 1-PW laser pulses on 10- to 100-nm-thick polymer targets. The proton energy scaling with respect to the intensity and target thickness was examined. The experiments demonstrated, for the first time with linearly polarized light, a transition from the target normal sheath acceleration to radiation pressure acceleration and showed a maximum proton energy of 45 MeV when a 10-nm-thick target was irradiated by a laser intensity of 3.3x1020 W/cm2. The experimental results were further supported by two- and three-dimensional particle-in-cell simulations. Based on the deduced proton energy scaling, proton beams having an energy of ~ 200 MeV should be feasible at a laser intensity of 1.5x1021 W/cm2.
