B. Aurand,
S. Kuschel,
O. Jäckel,
C. Rödel,
H. Zhao,
S. Herzer,
A. Paz,
J. Bierbach,
J. Polz,
B. Elkin,
A. Karmakar,
P. Gibbon,
M.C. Kaluza,
and T. Kühl
Enhanced radiation pressure-assisted acceleration by temporally tuned counter-propagating pulses
Nucl. Instr. Meth. Phys. Res. A, 740 :83 (March 2014)
Enhanced radiation pressure-assisted acceleration by temporally tuned counter-propagating pulses
Nucl. Instr. Meth. Phys. Res. A, 740 :83 (March 2014)
Abstract:
Within the last decade, laser-ion acceleration has become a field of broad interest. The possibility to generate short proton- or heavy ion bunches with an energy of a few tens of MeV by table-top laser systems could open new opportunities for medical or technical applications. Nevertheless, today's laser-acceleration schemes lead mainly to a temperature-like energy distribution of the accelerated ions, a big disadvantage compared to mono-energetic beams from conventional accelerators. Recent results [1] of laser-ion acceleration using radiation-pressure appear promising to overcome this drawback. In this paper, we demonstrate the influence of a second counter-propagating laser pulse interacting with a nm-thick target, creating a well defined pre-plasma.