Laser-driven ion sources are a rapidly developing technology producing high energy,high peak current beams.Their suitability for applications,such as compact medical accelerators,motivates development of robust accele...Laser-driven ion sources are a rapidly developing technology producing high energy,high peak current beams.Their suitability for applications,such as compact medical accelerators,motivates development of robust acceleration schemes using widely available repetitive ultraintense femtosecond lasers.These applications not only require high beam energy,but also place demanding requirements on the source stability and controllability.This can be seriously affected by the laser temporal contrast,precluding the replication of ion acceleration performance on independent laser systems with otherwise similar parameters.Here,we present the experimental generation of>60 MeV protons and>30 MeV u-1 carbon ions from sub-micrometre thickness Formvar foils irradiated with laser intensities>1021 Wcm2.Ions are accelerated by an extreme localised space charge field≥30TVm-1,over a million times higher than used in conventional accelerators.The field is formed by a rapid expulsion of electrons from the target bulk due to relativistically induced transparency,in which relativistic corrections to the refractive index enables laser transmission through normally opaque plasma.We replicate the mechanism on two different laser facilities and show that the optimum target thickness decreases with improved laser contrast due to reduced pre-expansion.Our demonstration that energetic ions can be accelerated by this mechanism at different contrast levels relaxes laser requirements and indicates interaction parameters for realising application-specific beam delivery.展开更多
基金supported by Kakenhi Grant No.16K05506,Grant No.20H00140,Grant No.21KK0049,Grant No.22H00121,JST PRESTO Grant No.JPMJPR16P9,QST President's Strategic Grant(QST) International Research Initiative(AAA98)and Creative Research(ABACS),and by Laserlab Europe V(PRISES,contract no.871124)supported by EU's Horizon 2020 research and innovation program under the Marie Sktodowska-Curie grant agreement No 894679support by JST-Mirai Program Grant Number JPMJMI17A1,Japan.N.P.D.,EJ.D.,G.S.H.,Z.N.acknowledge support from STFC grants ST/P002021/1,STN001639/1.
文摘Laser-driven ion sources are a rapidly developing technology producing high energy,high peak current beams.Their suitability for applications,such as compact medical accelerators,motivates development of robust acceleration schemes using widely available repetitive ultraintense femtosecond lasers.These applications not only require high beam energy,but also place demanding requirements on the source stability and controllability.This can be seriously affected by the laser temporal contrast,precluding the replication of ion acceleration performance on independent laser systems with otherwise similar parameters.Here,we present the experimental generation of>60 MeV protons and>30 MeV u-1 carbon ions from sub-micrometre thickness Formvar foils irradiated with laser intensities>1021 Wcm2.Ions are accelerated by an extreme localised space charge field≥30TVm-1,over a million times higher than used in conventional accelerators.The field is formed by a rapid expulsion of electrons from the target bulk due to relativistically induced transparency,in which relativistic corrections to the refractive index enables laser transmission through normally opaque plasma.We replicate the mechanism on two different laser facilities and show that the optimum target thickness decreases with improved laser contrast due to reduced pre-expansion.Our demonstration that energetic ions can be accelerated by this mechanism at different contrast levels relaxes laser requirements and indicates interaction parameters for realising application-specific beam delivery.
