title: Shock ion acceleration by an ultrashort circularly polarized laser pulse via relativistic transparency in an exploded target.
abstract: We investigated ion acceleration by an electrostatic shock in an exploded target irradiated by an ultrashort, circularly polarized laser pulse by means of one- and three-dimensional particle-in-cell simulations. We discovered that the laser field penetrating via relativistic transparency (RT) rapidly heated the upstream electron plasma to enable the formation of a high-speed electrostatic shock. Owing to the RT-based rapid heating and the fast compression of the initial density spike by a circularly polarized pulse, a new regime of the shock ion acceleration driven by an ultrashort (20-40 fs), moderately intense (1-1.4 PW) laser pulse is envisaged. This regime enables more efficient shock ion acceleration under a limited total pulse energy than a linearly polarized pulse with crystal laser systems of λ∼1μm.
authors.affiliation: School of Electrical and Computer Engineering, UNIST, 50 UNIST-gil, Ulju-gun, Ulsan, 689-798, Korea.
authors.forename: Young-Kuk
authors.initials: YK
authors.lastname: Kim
authors.affiliation: Center for Relativistic Laser Science, Institute for Basic Science (IBS), Gwangju 500-712, Korea.
authors.forename: Myung-Hoon
authors.initials: MH
authors.lastname: Cho
authors.affiliation: School of Natural Science, UNIST, 50 UNIST-gil, Ulju-gun, Ulsan, 689-798, Korea.
authors.forename: Hyung Seon
authors.initials: HS
authors.lastname: Song
authors.affiliation: School of Natural Science, UNIST, 50 UNIST-gil, Ulju-gun, Ulsan, 689-798, Korea.
authors.forename: Teyoun
authors.initials: T
authors.lastname: Kang
authors.affiliation: Biomed Team, Electronics and Telecommunications Research Institute, 218 Gajeongno, Yuseong-gu, Daejeon 305-700, Korea.
authors.forename: Hyung Ju
authors.initials: HJ
authors.lastname: Park
authors.affiliation: Biomed Team, Electronics and Telecommunications Research Institute, 218 Gajeongno, Yuseong-gu, Daejeon 305-700, Korea.
authors.forename: Moon Youn
authors.initials: MY
authors.lastname: Jung
authors.affiliation: School of Natural Science, UNIST, 50 UNIST-gil, Ulju-gun, Ulsan, 689-798, Korea.
authors.forename: Min Sup
authors.initials: MS
authors.lastname: Hur
mesh_terms: D000054:Acceleration; D004583:Electrons; D006358:Hot Temperature; D007700:Kinetics; D007834:Lasers; D008962:Models, Theoretical