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Title: Tri-stage quasimonoenergetic proton acceleration from a multi-species thick target

Abstract

We show that quasimonoenergetic proton beams can be generated through a multi-ion thick target irradiated by a circularly polarized laser pulse. After disrupted by the transverse instabilities in the laser pressure acceleration process, heavy ions as majority species can still provide a co-moving electric field. Different from the dynamics using ultrathin foil, protons with small doped rates can experience a full tri-stage quasimonoenergetic acceleration (hole boring, sheath boosting, and free expansion stages) in this scenario. A theoretical model is developed to explain the proton energy evolution in detail and verified by two-dimensional particle-in-cell simulations. Finally, the scaling of proton energy with laser intensity indicates that the 200 MeV proton beam with narrow energy spread (3%–10%) and sufficiently large charges (1010–1011) required for medical applications can be obtained using 100s TW class laser systems in near future.

Authors:
ORCiD logo [1];  [2];  [2];  [2];  [2];  [3];  [3];  [4];  [3];  [3]
  1. Tsinghua Univ., Beijing (China). Dept. of Engineering Physics; Weizmann Inst. of Science, Rehovot (Israel). Dept. of Physics of Complex Systems
  2. Tsinghua Univ., Beijing (China). Dept. of Engineering Physics
  3. Univ. of California, Los Angeles, CA (United States)
  4. Univ. of California, Los Angeles, CA (United States); SLAC National Accelerator Lab., Menlo Park, CA (United States)
Publication Date:
Research Org.:
SLAC National Accelerator Lab., Menlo Park, CA (United States)
Sponsoring Org.:
USDOE; National Science Foundation (NSF); National Natural Science Foundation of China (NSFC)
OSTI Identifier:
1468690
Alternate Identifier(s):
OSTI ID: 1459696
Grant/Contract Number:  
AC02-76SF00515; ACI-1339893; PHY-1415386; PHY-500630; 11425521; 11475101; 11535006; 11775125; SC0008316; SC0008491; SC0010064; SC0014260
Resource Type:
Accepted Manuscript
Journal Name:
Physics of Plasmas
Additional Journal Information:
Journal Volume: 25; Journal Issue: 7; Journal ID: ISSN 1070-664X
Publisher:
American Institute of Physics (AIP)
Country of Publication:
United States
Language:
English
Subject:
70 PLASMA PHYSICS AND FUSION TECHNOLOGY

Citation Formats

Wan, Y., Pai, C. -H., Hua, J. F., Wu, Y. P., Lu, W., Li, F., Zhang, C. J., Xu, X. L., Joshi, C., and Mori, W. B. Tri-stage quasimonoenergetic proton acceleration from a multi-species thick target. United States: N. p., 2018. Web. doi:10.1063/1.5029556.
Wan, Y., Pai, C. -H., Hua, J. F., Wu, Y. P., Lu, W., Li, F., Zhang, C. J., Xu, X. L., Joshi, C., & Mori, W. B. Tri-stage quasimonoenergetic proton acceleration from a multi-species thick target. United States. https://doi.org/10.1063/1.5029556
Wan, Y., Pai, C. -H., Hua, J. F., Wu, Y. P., Lu, W., Li, F., Zhang, C. J., Xu, X. L., Joshi, C., and Mori, W. B. Tue . "Tri-stage quasimonoenergetic proton acceleration from a multi-species thick target". United States. https://doi.org/10.1063/1.5029556. https://www.osti.gov/servlets/purl/1468690.
@article{osti_1468690,
title = {Tri-stage quasimonoenergetic proton acceleration from a multi-species thick target},
author = {Wan, Y. and Pai, C. -H. and Hua, J. F. and Wu, Y. P. and Lu, W. and Li, F. and Zhang, C. J. and Xu, X. L. and Joshi, C. and Mori, W. B.},
abstractNote = {We show that quasimonoenergetic proton beams can be generated through a multi-ion thick target irradiated by a circularly polarized laser pulse. After disrupted by the transverse instabilities in the laser pressure acceleration process, heavy ions as majority species can still provide a co-moving electric field. Different from the dynamics using ultrathin foil, protons with small doped rates can experience a full tri-stage quasimonoenergetic acceleration (hole boring, sheath boosting, and free expansion stages) in this scenario. A theoretical model is developed to explain the proton energy evolution in detail and verified by two-dimensional particle-in-cell simulations. Finally, the scaling of proton energy with laser intensity indicates that the 200 MeV proton beam with narrow energy spread (3%–10%) and sufficiently large charges (1010–1011) required for medical applications can be obtained using 100s TW class laser systems in near future.},
doi = {10.1063/1.5029556},
journal = {Physics of Plasmas},
number = 7,
volume = 25,
place = {United States},
year = {Tue Jul 10 00:00:00 EDT 2018},
month = {Tue Jul 10 00:00:00 EDT 2018}
}

Journal Article:
Free Publicly Available Full Text
Publisher's Version of Record

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Cited by: 3 works
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Figures / Tables:

Figure 1 Figure 1: Snapshots of (a)–(c) show the lineouts of electron density $n_e$ (red), heavy ion density $n_i$ (green), proton density $n_H$ (blue), and longitudinal electric field Ez (purple) along the laser propagation axis (y = 0) at three different times. (d)–(f) show the longitudinal phase spaces ($z – P_z$) ofmore » heavy ions (green) and protons (blue) near the laser axis in the region of |y| $\leq$ 20c/$\omega_0$ at the same time corresponding to (a)–(c), respectively.« less

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Figures/Tables have been extracted from DOE-funded journal article accepted manuscripts.