PHYSICAL REVIEW E 90, 023103 (2014)
Role of target material in proton acceleration from thin foils irradiated by ultrashort laser pulses M. Tayyab,1,* S. Bagchi,1 B. Ramakrishna,1 T. Mandal,1 A. Upadhyay,1 R. Ramis,2 J. A. Chakera,1 P. A. Naik,1 and P. D. Gupta1 1
Laser Plasma Division, Raja Ramanna Centre for Advanced Technology, Indore 452 013, India 2 E.T.S.I. Aeron´auticos, Universidad Polit´ecnica de Madrid, 28040 Madrid, Spain (Received 22 April 2014; revised manuscript received 14 July 2014; published 21 August 2014)
We report on the proton acceleration studies from thin metallic foils of varying atomic number (Z) and thicknesses, investigated using a 45 fs, 10 TW Ti:sapphire laser system. An optimum foil thickness was observed for efficient proton acceleration for our laser conditions, dictated by the laser ASE prepulse and hot electron propagation behavior inside the material. The hydrodynamic simulations for ASE prepulse support the experimental observation. The observed maximum proton energy at different thicknesses for a given element is in good agreement with the reported scaling laws. The results with foils of different atomic number Z suggest that a judicious choice of the foil material can enhance the proton acceleration efficiency, resulting into higher proton energy. DOI: 10.1103/PhysRevE.90.023103
PACS number(s): 52.38.Kd, 52.38.Mf, 52.38.Ph
I. INTRODUCTION
High-energy ion beams with low emittance (
Role of target material in proton acceleration from thin foils irradiated by ultrashort laser pulses M. Tayyab,1,* S. Bagchi,1 B. Ramakrishna,1 T. Mandal,1 A. Upadhyay,1 R. Ramis,2 J. A. Chakera,1 P. A. Naik,1 and P. D. Gupta1 1
Laser Plasma Division, Raja Ramanna Centre for Advanced Technology, Indore 452 013, India 2 E.T.S.I. Aeron´auticos, Universidad Polit´ecnica de Madrid, 28040 Madrid, Spain (Received 22 April 2014; revised manuscript received 14 July 2014; published 21 August 2014)
We report on the proton acceleration studies from thin metallic foils of varying atomic number (Z) and thicknesses, investigated using a 45 fs, 10 TW Ti:sapphire laser system. An optimum foil thickness was observed for efficient proton acceleration for our laser conditions, dictated by the laser ASE prepulse and hot electron propagation behavior inside the material. The hydrodynamic simulations for ASE prepulse support the experimental observation. The observed maximum proton energy at different thicknesses for a given element is in good agreement with the reported scaling laws. The results with foils of different atomic number Z suggest that a judicious choice of the foil material can enhance the proton acceleration efficiency, resulting into higher proton energy. DOI: 10.1103/PhysRevE.90.023103
PACS number(s): 52.38.Kd, 52.38.Mf, 52.38.Ph
I. INTRODUCTION
High-energy ion beams with low emittance (
