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Ion acceleration in the MeV range can be routinely achieved with table-toplaser technology. One of the current challenges is to improve the energycoupling from the laser to the proton beam without increasing the laser peakpower. Introducing nanostructures at the front target surface was shown to bebeneficial for an efficient transfer of energy to the electrons. In thismanuscript, we study by using full-scale three-dimensional particle-in-cellsimulations and finite laser pulses, the process when a proposed optimal targetwith triangular nanostructure (previously found to allow 97% laser energyabsorption) is used . We demonstrate that the absorbed laser energy does notdepend on the dimensionality in the range of parameters presented. We alsopresent an analytical model for laser absorption that includes deviations fromthe ideal conditions. This is supported by a numerical parameter study thatestablishes the tolerance with respect to the nanostructure size, use ofdifferent ion species, existence of preplasma, etc. We found that altering thetarget thickness or using different ions does not affect the absorption, but itdoes affect the energy redistribution among the different plasma species. Theoptimal configuration ($h = 1~\lambda,~ w = 0.7~ \lambda$) is robust withrespect to the target fabrication errors. However, high contrast laser pulsesare required, because a pre-plasma layer with a thickness on the order of 0.5lambda is enough to lower the laser absorption by more than a 10% in anon-optimal scenario.

Suitability and robustness of triangular nanostructured targets for proton acceleration