A scheme of generating energetic ions by the interaction of an ultrahigh-intensity laser pulse and a thin solid foil is studied. The combination of the effects of radiation pressure and Coulomb explosion makes the ion acceleration more effective. The maximum ion velocity variation with time is predicted theoretically while the temporal evolution of the electrostatic field due to the Coulomb explosion is taken into consideration. Two-dimensional particle-in-cell simulations are done to verify the theory.
The effects of ion motion on the generation of short-cycle relativistic laser pulses during radiation pressure acceleration are investigated by analytical modeling and particle-in-cell simulations. Studies show that the rear part of the transmitted pulse modulated by ion motion is sharper compared with the case of the electron shutter only. In this study, the ions further modulate the short-cycle pulses transmitted. A 3.9 fs laser pulse with an intensity of 1.33×1021W cm-2is generated by properly controlling the motions of the electron and ion in the simulations. The short-cycle laser pulse source proposed can be applied in the generation of single attosecond pulses and electron acceleration in a small bubble regime.
Forward fast protons are generated by the moderate-intensity laser-foil interaction. Protons with maximum energy 190 keV are measured by using magnetic spectrometer and CR-39 solid state track detectors along the direction normal to the rear surface. The experimental results are also modeled by the paxticle-in-cell method, investigating the timevarying electron temperature and the rear sheath field. The temporal and spatial structure of the sheath electrical field, revealed in the simulation, suggests that these protons are accelerated by target normal sheath acceleration （TNSA） mechanism.
The laser-ion acceleration from the ultra-short and ultra-intense laser-matter interactions attracts more and more interest nowadays. When a laser pulse interacts with a target, relativistic electrons are generated in a period of few femtoseconds and driven away by the ponderomotive force, then a huge charge-separation field forms. In general cases, the ion acceleration is determined by this charge-separation field and the scale length of the plasma density. A general time-dependent solution is obtained to describe laser-plasma isothermal expansions into a vacuum, which is the fundamental theory of the laser-ion acceleration. It is adequate for non-quasi-neutral plasmas and different types of the scale length of the density gradient. The previous solutions are some special cases of our general solution. It is found that there exist both a compression layer of the ion velocity distribution and a potential well for sorue initial conditions. However, many unaccounted idiographic solutions, which may be used to reveal new mechanisms of ion acceleration, may be deduced from our general solutions.
In one-dimensional particle-in-cell simulations, this paper shows that the formation of multiple ion bunches is disadvantageous to the generation of monoenergetic ion beams and can be suppressed by choosing an optimum target thickness in the radiation pressure acceleration mechanism by a circularly polarised laser pulse. As the laser pulse becomes intense, the optimum target thickness obtained by a non-relativistic treatment is no longer adequate. Considering the relativistic Doppler-shifted pressure, it proposes a relativistic formulation to determine the optimum target thickness. The theoretical predictions agree with the simulation results well. The model is also valid for two-dimensional cases. The accelerated ion beams can be compelled to be more stable by choosing the optimum target thickness when they exhibit some unstable behaviours.
