Electron and ion acceleration from femtosecond laser-plasma peeler scheme

Abstract

Using three-dimensional particle-in-cell simulations, we further investigate the electron and ion acceleration from femtosecond laser-plasma peeler scheme which was proposed in our recent paper (Shen et al 2021 Phys. Rev. X 11 041002). In addition to the standard setup where a laser pulse impinges on an edge of a single tape target, two new variants of the target, i.e., a parallel tape and a cross tape target, were proposed, where strong surface plasma waves can also be efficiently excited at the front edges of the target. By using a tabletop 200 TW-class laser pulse, we observe generation of high-flux, well-collimated, superponderomotive electrons. More importantly, quasimonoenergetic proton beams can always be obtained in all the three setups, while with the single tape case, the obtained proton beam has the highest peak energy and narrowest spectrum.

High-energy quasi-monoenergetic proton beam from micro-tube targets driven by Laguerre–Gaussian lasers

“…This increase in E x can be attributed to the excitation of surface plasma waves (SPWs) at the interface between the laser pulse and the target material. SPWs can be excited when a laser pulse is incident parallelly into a flat surface of an overdense plasma [52][53][54][55]. They produce much stronger longitudinal electric field than the laser itself.…”

“…The advantage of our scheme lies in the intensity distribution of the LG laser. In the case of the planar scheme used in previous studies [52,55], the Gaussian laser only focuses its highest intensity at the center point, while our LG laser covers the entire front surface of the tube target with the most intense part of the laser. This unique feature of the LG laser increases the efficiency of electron and proton acceleration.…”