Quasi-monoenergetic protons accelerated by laser radiation pressure and shocks in thin gaseous targets
- East-West Space Science Center, University of Maryland, College Park, Maryland 20742 (United States)
- Department of Physics, Shanghai Jiao Tong University, Shanghai 200240 (China)
Recent experiments and simulations have demonstrated effective CO{sub 2} laser acceleration of quasi-monoenergetic protons from thick gaseous hydrogen target (of thickness tens of laser wavelengths) via hole boring and shock accelerations. We present here an alternative novel acceleration scheme by combining laser radiation pressure acceleration with shock acceleration of protons in a thin gaseous target of thickness several laser wavelengths. The laser pushes the thin gaseous plasma forward while compressing it with protons trapped in it. We demonstrated the combined acceleration with two-dimensional particle-in-cell simulation and obtained quasi-monoenergetic protons {approx}44 MeV in a gas target of thickness twice of the laser wavelength irradiated by circularly polarized CO{sub 2} laser with normalized laser amplitude a{sub 0}=10.
- OSTI ID:
- 22085948
- Journal Information:
- Physics of Plasmas, Vol. 19, Issue 7; Other Information: (c) 2012 American Institute of Physics; Country of input: International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA); ISSN 1070-664X
- Country of Publication:
- United States
- Language:
- English
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