Efficient energy transfer from electromagnetic waves to ions has been demanded to control laboratory plasmas for various applications and could be useful to understand the nature of space and astrophysical plasmas. However, there exists a severe unsolved problem that most of the wave energy is converted quickly to electrons, but not to ions. Here, an energy conversion process to ions in overdense plasmas associated with whistler waves is investigated by numerical simulations and theoretical model. Whistler waves propagating along a magnetic field in space and laboratories often form the standing waves by the collision of counter-propagating waves or through the reflection. We find that ions in the standing whistler waves acquire a large amount of energy directly from the waves in a short timescale comparable to the wave oscillation period. Thermalized ion temperature increases in proportion to the square of the wave amplitude and becomes much higher than the electron temperature in a wide range of wave-plasma conditions. This efficient ion-heating mechanism applies to various plasma phenomena in space physics and fusion energy sciences.
Structures on the front surface of thin foil targets for laser-driven ion acceleration have been proposed to increase the ion source maximum energy and conversion efficiency. While structures have been shown to significantly boost the proton acceleration from pulses of moderate-energy fluence, their performance on tightly focused and high-energy lasers remains unclear. Here, we report the results of laser-driven three-dimensional (3D)-printed microtube targets, focusing on their efficacy for ion acceleration. Using the high-contrast (∼10 12 ) PHELIX laser (150 J, 10 21 W/cm 2 ), we studied the acceleration of ions from 1-μm-thick foils covered with micropillars or microtubes, which we compared with flat foils. The front-surface structures significantly increased the conversion efficiency from laser to light ions, with up to a factor of 5 higher proton number with respect to a flat target, albeit without an increase of the cutoff energy. An optimum diameter was found for the microtube targets. Our findings are supported by a systematic particle-in-cell modeling investigation of ion acceleration using 2D simulations with various structure dimensions. Simulations reproduce the experimental data with good agreement, including the observation of the optimum tube diameter, and reveal that the laser is shuttered by the plasma filling the tubes, explaining why the ion cutoff energy was not increased in this regime.
Laser-driven ion acceleration is often analyzed assuming that ionization reaches a steady state early in the interaction of the laser pulse with the target. This assumption breaks down for materials of high atomic number for which the ionization occurs concurrently with the acceleration process. Using particle-in-cell simulations, we have examined acceleration and simultaneous field ionization of copper ions in ultra-thin targets (20–150 nm thick) irradiated by a laser pulse with intensity 1 × 1021 W/cm2. At this intensity, the laser pulse drives strong electric fields at the rear side of the target that can ionize Cu to charge states with valence L-shell or full K-shell. The highly-charged ions are produced only in a very localized region due to a significant gap between the M- and L-shells’ ionization potentials and can be accelerated by strong, forward-directed sections of the field. Such an “ionization injection” leads to well-pronounced bunches of energetic, highly-charged ions. We also find that for the thinnest target (20 nm) a push by the laser further increases the ion energy gain. Thus, the field ionization, concurrent with the acceleration, offers a promising mechanism for the production of energetic, high-charge ion bunches.
In this paper, we present the mechanisms of ionization of a thin gold film irradiated by a high-intensity, short-pulse laser in the range of I ¼ 10 20À22 W=cm 2 and the associated acceleration of multiply charged gold ions. A numerical one-dimensional simulation using an extended particle-in-cell code, which includes atomic and collisional relaxation processes, indicates that two types of acceleration, holeboring radiation pressure acceleration (RPA) and target normal sheath acceleration (TNSA), contribute to the generation of highly charged ions with kinetic energies on the order of 10 MeV/u. In each acceleration, a longitudinal electrostatic field excited by different mechanisms dominantly ionizes atoms to higher charge states and accelerates them to the vacuum region from the rear surface, which is opposite the front surface irradiated by the laser field. The field ionization process dominantly ionizes high energy ions to the high charge state, while a large number of ions with energy <1 MeV=u are ionized by an electron impact ionization process. In TNSA, a multiply charged ion generated at the rear surface is accelerated to the maximum energy although the ion with the highest charge state is generated at the front surface in RPA. However, the existence of contamination, such as water vapor, suppresses the ion energy of TNSA to less than that of RPA since the sheath field readily accelerates the protons and oxygen prior to the acceleration of the gold ions. Our derived theoretical scaling describes the maximum ion energy for each charge state in the cases with and without contamination using the relationship between the longitudinal electrostatic field profile near the rear surface and the classical tunnel field ionization model.
The ionization dynamics of a carbon thin film irradiated by a high power short pulse laser in the range of 1019−20 W/cm2 are studied using the extended particle-based integrated code (EPIC), which includes atomic and collisional processes. Two types of ionization dynamics exhibiting different spatio-temporal structures are found to predominantly regulate the process, and arise depending on the laser amplitude. The first is a fast convective propagation for charge states up to C4+, which keeps a steep ionization front. The velocity of the front is of the order of the speed of light. The front formation results from the localized longitudinal electrostatic field and associated field ionization, which in turn propagates inside the film. This convective propagation is triggered when the laser field becomes high enough that electron bunches accelerated by the laser ponderomotive force reach relativistic energies and penetrate inside the film across the surface. The second dynamics is a fast non-diffusive propagation of ionization showing a long plasma density scale length for C5+ and C6+. This process results predominantly from electron impact ionization by high energy electron bunches successively produced by the laser. These electron bunches also excite wake fields that propagate inside the film and contribute to ionizing the film to higher charge states, i.e., C5+ and C6+, especially near the front surface. The effect of field ionization loss, which sensitively influences the ionization dynamics in the relatively low laser power regime, is also discussed.
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