title: Laser-plasma acceleration of quasi-monoenergetic protons from microstructured targets.
abstract: Particle acceleration based on high intensity laser systems (a process known as laser-plasma acceleration) has achieved high quality particle beams that compare favourably with conventional acceleration techniques in terms of emittance, brightness and pulse duration. A long-term difficulty associated with laser-plasma acceleration--the very broad, exponential energy spectrum of the emitted particles--has been overcome recently for electron beams. Here we report analogous results for ions, specifically the production of quasi-monoenergetic proton beams using laser-plasma accelerators. Reliable and reproducible laser-accelerated ion beams were achieved by intense laser irradiation of solid microstructured targets. This proof-of-principle experiment serves to illuminate the role of laser-generated plasmas as feasible particle sources. Scalability studies show that, owing to their compact size and reasonable cost, such table-top laser systems with high repetition rates could contribute to the development of new generations of particle injectors that may be suitable for medical proton therapy.
authors.affiliation: Institut für Optik und Quantenelektronik, Friedrich-Schiller-Universität, 07743 Jena, Germany. schwoerer@ioq.uni-jena.de
authors.forename: H
authors.initials: H
authors.lastname: Schwoerer
authors.forename: S
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Pfotenhauer
authors.forename: O
authors.initials: O
authors.lastname: Jäckel
authors.forename: K-U
authors.initials: KU
authors.lastname: Amthor
authors.forename: B
authors.initials: B
authors.lastname: Liesfeld
authors.forename: W
authors.initials: W
authors.lastname: Ziegler
authors.forename: R
authors.initials: R
authors.lastname: Sauerbrey
authors.forename: K W D
authors.initials: KW
authors.lastname: Ledingham
authors.forename: T
authors.initials: T
authors.lastname: Esirkepov