Quasimonoenergetic deuteron bursts produced by ultraintense laser pulses.
We report on the generation and laser acceleration of bunches of energetic deuterons with a small energy spread at about 2 MeV. This quasimonoenergetic peak within the ion energy spectrum was observed when heavy-water microdroplets were irradiated with ultrashort laser pulses of about 40 fs duration and high (10(-8)) temporal contrast, at an intensity of 10(19) W/cm(2). The results can be explained by a simple physical model related to spatial separation of two ion species within a finite-volume target. The production of quasimonoenergetic ions is a long-standing goal in laser-particle acceleration; it could have diverse applications such as in medicine or in the development of future compact ion accelerators.
Ter-Avetisyan
S
S
Max-Born-Institut Berlin, Max-Born-Strasse 2a, D-12489 Berlin, Germany.
Schnürer
M
M
Nickles
P V
PV
Kalashnikov
M
M
Risse
E
E
Sokollik
T
T
Sandner
W
W
Andreev
A
A
Tikhonchuk
V
V