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Enhanced ion acceleration by collisionless electrostatic shock in thin foils irradiated by ultraintense laser pulse

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  22 April 2009

M.-P. Liu ,
B.-S. Xie ,
Y.-S. Huang ,
J. Liu  and
M.Y. Yu
M.-P. Liu
Affiliation:
Key Laboratory of Beam Technology and Materials, Modification of the Ministry of Education, Beijing Normal University, Beijing, People's Republic of China
B.-S. Xie*
Affiliation:
Key Laboratory of Beam Technology and Materials, Modification of the Ministry of Education, Beijing Normal University, Beijing, People's Republic of China College of Nuclear Science and technology, Beijing Normal University, Beijing, People's Republic of China Beijing Radiation Center, Beijing, People's Republic of China
Y.-S. Huang
Affiliation:
Department of Engineering Physics, Tsinghua University, Beijing, People's Republic of China
J. Liu
Affiliation:
Institute of Applied Physics and Computational Mathematics, Beijing, People's Republic of China
M.Y. Yu
Affiliation:
Institute for Fusion Theory and Simulation, Department of Physics, Zhejiang University, Hangzhou, People's Republic of China Institut für Theoretische Physik I, Ruhr-Universität Bochum, Bochum, Germany
*
Address correspondence and reprint requests to: Bai-Song Xie, College of Nuclear Science and technology, Beijing Normal University, Beijing 100875, People's Republic of China. E-mail: bsxie@bnu.edu.cn
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Abstract

The formation of collisionless electrostatic shock (CES) and ion acceleration in thin foils irradiated by intense laser pulse is investigated using particle-in-cell simulation. The CES can appear in the expanding plasma behind the foil when self-induced transparency occurs. The transmitting laser pulse can expel target-interior electrons, in addition to the electrons from the front target surface. The additional hot electrons lead to an enhanced and spatially-extended sheath field behind the foil. As the CES propagates in the plasma, it also continuously forward-reflects many of the upstream ions to higher energies. The latter ions are further accelerated by the enhanced sheath field and can overtake and shield the target-normal sheath accelerated ions. The energy gain of the CES accelerated ions can thus be considerably higher than that of the latter.

Keywords

Collisionless electrostatic shockIon accelerationLaser-foil accelerationTarget-normal sheath acceleration
Type
Research Article
Information
Laser and Particle Beams , Volume 27 , Issue 2 , June 2009 , pp. 327 - 333
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2009

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