Quasi-monoenergetic ion generation by hole-boring radiation pressure acceleration in inhomogeneous plasmas using tailored laser pulses
- Institute of Laser Engineering, Osaka University, Osaka 565-0871 (Japan)
- Key Laboratory for Laser Plasmas, Department of Physics and Astronomy, Shanghai Jiaotong University, Shanghai 200240, China and Department of Mathematics, Institute of Natural Sciences, and MOE-LSC, Shanghai Jiao Tong University, Shanghai 20040 (China)
- Key Laboratory for Laser Plasmas, Department of Physics and Astronomy, Shanghai Jiaotong University, Shanghai 200240, China and SUPA, Department of Physics, University of Strathclyde, Glasgow G4 0NG (United Kingdom)
- Theoretical Quantum Electronics (TQE), Technische Universität Darmstadt, D-64289 Darmstadt (Germany)
- Shanghai Institute of Optics and Fine Mechanics, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Shanghai 201800 (China)
It is proposed that laser hole-boring at a steady speed in inhomogeneous overdense plasma can be realized by the use of temporally tailored intense laser pulses, producing high-fluence quasi-monoenergetic ion beams. A general temporal profile of such laser pulses is formulated for arbitrary plasma density distribution. As an example, for a precompressed deuterium-tritium fusion target with an exponentially increasing density profile, its matched laser profile for steady hole-boring is given theoretically and verified numerically by particle-in-cell simulations. Furthermore, we propose to achieve fast ignition by the in-situ hole-boring accelerated ions using a tailored laser pulse. Simulations show that the effective energy fluence, conversion efficiency, energy spread, and collimation of the resulting ion beam can be significantly improved as compared to those found with un-tailored laser profiles. For the fusion fuel with an areal density of 1.5 g cm{sup –2}, simulation indicates that it is promising to realize fast ion ignition by using a tailored driver pulse with energy about 65 kJ.
- OSTI ID:
- 22252142
- Journal Information:
- Physics of Plasmas, Vol. 21, Issue 1; Other Information: (c) 2014 AIP Publishing LLC; Country of input: International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA); ISSN 1070-664X
- Country of Publication:
- United States
- Language:
- English
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