Speaker
Bin Qiao
Description
See the full Abstract at http://ocs.ciemat.es/EPS2018ABS/pdf/I4.210.pdf
Advances in Laser Driven Ion Acceleration
B. Qiao
Center for Applied Physics and Technology & School of Physics, Peking University, Beijing,
China
Laser-driven ion acceleration is conceived to be one of the main applications of many pow-
erful laser facilities that are being projected, built, or already in operation around the world.
It opens a way for a future new generation of compact accelerators providing high-quality ion
beams for many applications in medicine, industry, science and others. Several acceleration
methods, including target normal sheath acceleration (TNSA), shock wave acceleration (SWA),
and radiation pressure acceleration (RPA), have been proposed and identified in experiments.
However, so far, the obtained ion beams have not achieved the required high qualities yet, such
as high energy, narrow energy spread, large particle number, etc. RPA is in principle regarded
as the most promising scheme, nevertheless, it currently meets the great challenge: the dramatic
growth of the multi-dimensional instabilities that lead to premature break of the effective accel-
eration and destruction of the beam quality [1]. In this talk, I shall give an overview of recent
advances in study of laser-driven ion acceleration at Peking University (PKU) [2, 3, 4, 5]. In
particular, I shall report our recent progresses in theoretical and numerical studies on stabiliza-
tion of laser-driven ion RPA [2, 3]. A novel dynamic stabilization scheme to achieve stable
RPA of ions from laser-irradiated ultrathin foils is proposed, where a high-Z material coating in
front is used. The coated high-Z material, acting as a moving electron repository, continuously
replenishes the accelerating foil with comoving electrons in the light-sail stage due to its suc-
cessive ionization under laser fields with Gaussian temporal profile. As a result, the detrimental
effects such as foil deformation and electron loss induced by the Rayleigh-Taylor-like and other
instabilities are significantly offset and suppressed so that stable RPA of ions are maintained.
Three-dimensional PIC simulations show that a monoenergetic Al13+ beam with peak energy
3.8GeV and particle number 1010 (charge > 20nC) can be obtained at intensity 1022 W/cm2 .
Experimental verification of this novel scheme is planned on Petawatt laser facilities in China.
References
[1] B. Qiao et al., Phys. Rev. Lett. 108, 115002 (2012).
[2] X. F. Shen, B. Qiao* et al., Phys. Rev. Lett. 118, 204802 (2017).
[3] X. F. Shen, B. Qiao* et al., New. J. Phys. 19, 033034 (2017).
[4] W. L. Zhang, B. Qiao* et al., New. J. Phys. 18, 093029 (2016);
[5] J. Kim, B. Qiao* et al., Phys. Rev. Lett. 115, 054801 (2015).
