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Scaling of ion energies in the relativistic-induced transparency regime

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  14 October 2015

D. Jung*
Affiliation:
Los Alamos National Laboratory, Los Alamos, New Mexico 87545, USA Centre for Plasma Physics (CPP), Queen's University Belfast, Belfast BT7 1NN, UK
B.J. Albright
Affiliation:
Los Alamos National Laboratory, Los Alamos, New Mexico 87545, USA
L. Yin
Affiliation:
Los Alamos National Laboratory, Los Alamos, New Mexico 87545, USA
D.C. Gautier
Affiliation:
Los Alamos National Laboratory, Los Alamos, New Mexico 87545, USA
B. Dromey
Affiliation:
Centre for Plasma Physics (CPP), Queen's University Belfast, Belfast BT7 1NN, UK
R. Shah
Affiliation:
Los Alamos National Laboratory, Los Alamos, New Mexico 87545, USA
S. Palaniyappan
Affiliation:
Los Alamos National Laboratory, Los Alamos, New Mexico 87545, USA
S. Letzring
Affiliation:
Los Alamos National Laboratory, Los Alamos, New Mexico 87545, USA
H.-C. Wu
Affiliation:
Los Alamos National Laboratory, Los Alamos, New Mexico 87545, USA
T. Shimada
Affiliation:
Los Alamos National Laboratory, Los Alamos, New Mexico 87545, USA
R.P. Johnson
Affiliation:
Los Alamos National Laboratory, Los Alamos, New Mexico 87545, USA
D. Habs
Affiliation:
Department für Physik, Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München, D-85748 Garching, Germany
M. Roth
Affiliation:
Department für Physik, Technische Universität Darmstadt, 64289 Darmstadt, Germany
J.C. Fernández
Affiliation:
Los Alamos National Laboratory, Los Alamos, New Mexico 87545, USA
B.M. Hegelich
Affiliation:
Los Alamos National Laboratory, Los Alamos, New Mexico 87545, USA
*
Address correspondence and reprint requests to: D. Jung, Centre for Plasma Physics (CPP), Queen's University Belfast, Belfast BT7 1NN, UK. E-mail: [email protected]

Abstract

Experimental data are presented showing maximum carbon C6+ ion energies obtained from nm-scaled targets in the relativistic transparent regime for laser intensities between 9 × 1019 and 2 × 1021 W/cm2. When combined with two-dimensional particle-in-cell simulations, these results show a steep linear scaling for carbon ions with the normalized laser amplitude a0 ($a_0 \propto \sqrt ( I)$). The results are in good agreement with a semi-analytic model that allows one to calculate the optimum thickness and the maximum ion energies as functions of a0 and the laser pulse duration τλ for ion acceleration in the relativistic-induced transparency regime. Following our results, ion energies exceeding 100 MeV/amu may be accessible with currently available laser systems.

Type
Research Article
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2015 

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References

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