Generating high-energy highly charged ion beams from petawatt-class laser interactions with compound targets.
A new method of generation of high-energy highly charged ion beams is proposed. The method is based on the interaction of petawatt circularly polarized laser pulses with high-Z compound targets consisting of two species of different charge-to-mass ratio. It is shown that highly charged ions produced by field ionization can be accelerated up to tens of MeV/u with ion (actually with Z ≤ 25) beam parameters like density and total charge inaccessible in conventional accelerators. A possibility of further ionization of the accelerated ion bunches in foil is also discussed.
Institute of Applied Physics, Russian Academy of Sciences, 603950 Nizhny Novgorod, Russia.
A V
AV
Korzhimanov
E S
ES
Efimenko
S V
SV
Golubev
A V
AV
Kim