Open AccessEnhanced target normal sheath acceleration of protons from intense laser interaction with a cone-tube target
Author(s) -
Kanglin Xiao,
T. W. Huang,
C. T. Zhou,
B. Qiao,
S. Z. Wu,
Shuangchen Ruan,
X. T. He
Publication year - 2016
Publication title -
aip advances
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.421
H-Index - 58
ISSN - 2158-3226
DOI - 10.1063/1.4939814
Subject(s) - laser , acceleration , proton , electric field , ponderomotive force , atomic physics , electron , bunches , physics , optics , scaling , tube (container) , materials science , nuclear physics , classical mechanics , quantum mechanics , geometry , mathematics , composite material
Laser driven proton acceleration is proposed to be greatly enhanced by using a cone-tube target, which can be easily manufactured by current 3D-print technology. It is observed that energetic electron bunches are generated along the tube and accelerated to a much higher temperature by the combination of ponderomotive force and longitudinal electric field which is induced by the optical confinement of the laser field. As a result, a localized and enhanced sheath field is produced at the rear of the target and the maximum proton energy is about three-fold increased based on the two-dimentional particle-in-cell simulation results. It is demonstrated that by employing this advanced target scheme, the scaling of the proton energy versus the laser intensity is much beyond the normal target normal sheath acceleration (TNSA) case