title: Laser acceleration of ion bunches at the front surface of overdense plasmas.
abstract: The acceleration of ions in the interaction of high intensity laser pulses with overdense plasmas is investigated with particle-in-cell simulations. For circular polarization of the laser pulses, high-density ion bunches moving into the plasma are generated at the laser-plasma interaction surface. A simple analytical model accounts for the numerical observations and provides scaling laws for the ion bunch energy and generation time as a function of pulse intensity and plasma density.
authors.affiliation: Istituto Nazionale per la Fisica della Materia and POLYLAB, Dipartimento di Fisica E. Fermi, Università di Pisa, Largo B. Pontecorvo 3, 56127 Pisa, Italy. macchi@df.unipi.it
authors.forename: Andrea
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Macchi
authors.forename: Federica
authors.initials: F
authors.lastname: Cattani
authors.forename: Tatiana V
authors.initials: TV
authors.lastname: Liseykina
authors.forename: Fulvio
authors.initials: F
authors.lastname: Cornolti