Scaling laws for laser-driven ion acceleration from nanometer-scale ultrathin foils

X. F. Shen, B. Qiao, A. Pukhov, S. Kar, S. P. Zhu, M. Borghesi, and X. T. He
Phys. Rev. E 104, 025210 – Published 30 August 2021
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Abstract

Laser-driven ion acceleration has attracted global interest for its potential towards the development of a new generation of compact, low-cost accelerators. Remarkable advances have been seen in recent years with a substantial proton energy increase in experiments, when nanometer-scale ultrathin foil targets and high-contrast intense lasers are applied. However, the exact acceleration dynamics and particularly the ion energy scaling laws in this novel regime are complex and still unclear. Here, we derive a scaling law for the attainable maximum ion energy from such laser-irradiated nanometer-scale foils based on analytical theory and multidimensional particle-in-cell simulations, and further show that this scaling law can be used to accurately describe experimental data over a large range of laser and target parameters on different facilities. This provides crucial references for parameter design and experimentation of the future laser devices towards various potential applications.

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  • Received 24 September 2020
  • Revised 20 February 2021
  • Accepted 12 August 2021

DOI:https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevE.104.025210

©2021 American Physical Society

Physics Subject Headings (PhySH)

Plasma PhysicsAccelerators & BeamsAtomic, Molecular & Optical

Authors & Affiliations

X. F. Shen1,2, B. Qiao1,3,*, A. Pukhov2, S. Kar4, S. P. Zhu5, M. Borghesi4, and X. T. He1,3,5

  • 1Center for Applied Physics and Technology, HEDPS, State Key Laboratory of Nuclear Physics and Technology, and School of Physics, Peking University, Beijing 100871, China
  • 2Institut für Theoretische Physik I, Heinrich-Heine-Universität Düsseldorf, 40225 Düsseldorf, Germany
  • 3Collaborative Innovation Center of IFSA (CICIFSA), Shanghai Jiao Tong University, Shanghai 200240, China
  • 4Center for Plasma Physics, School of Mathematics and Physics, Queen's University Belfast, Belfast BT7 1NN, United Kingdom
  • 5Institute of Applied Physics and Computational Mathematics, Beijing 100094, China

  • *bqiao@pku.edu.cn

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Issue

Vol. 104, Iss. 2 — August 2021

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