JuSPARC Colloquium: Radiation Pressure Acceleration of Ions

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07 Oct 2016 13:00

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PGI Lecture Hall

Abstract

The future applications of short-duration, multi-MeV ion beams produced in the interaction of high-intensity laser pulses with solid targets will require improvements in the conversion efficiency, peak ion energy, beam monochromaticity and collimation. Amongst the different mechanisms for laser-plasma based ion acceleration, the “light sail” concept, i.e. the radiation pressure acceleration (RPA) of ultrathin targets, theoretically has the most favourable scaling with laser parameters, so that energies per nucleon exceeding 100 MeV are within reach using present-day femtosecond petawatt lasers.

In optimal conditions such high-energy ions would be produced as high-density, charge neutralized bunches with narrow energy spectra, fulfilling theVeksler's "coherent acceleration" paradigm. Experiments so far have provided at best preliminary evidence of the onset of the light sail regime, making several issues apparent such as targetstability and the onset of "relativistic" transparency.

In this talk we briefly review both RPA “hole-boring” and “light sail” concepts, report and comment on recent experimental results and discuss expectations based on large scale simulations.