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ST: Fachverband Strahlen- und Medizinphysik
ST 5: MAP: Laser-driven Particle acceleration
ST 5.2: Talk
Wednesday, March 11, 2009, 09:30–10:00, A021
Enhanced laser-driven ion acceleration in the relativistic transparency regime — •Andreas Henig1,2, Daniel Kiefer1,2, Daniel Jung1,2, Kirk Flippo3, Cort Gautier3, Sam Letzring3, Randy Johnson3, Tom Shimada3, Lin Yin3, Brian Albright3, Juan Fernández3, Sergey Rykovanov1,4, Hui-Chun Wu1, Keith Markey5, Matt Zepf5, Vitaly Liechtenstein2,6, Jörg Schreiber1,2,7, Manuel Hegelich2,3, and Dietrich Habs1,2 — 1Max-Planck Institut für Quantenoptik, Garching, Germany — 2LMU München, Department für Physik, Garching, Germany — 3Los Alamos National Laboratory, Los Alamos, New Mexico 87545, USA — 4Moscow Physics Engineering Institute, Kashirskoe sh. 31, Moscow, Russia — 5Department of Physics and Astronomy, Queen’s University Belfast, BT7 1NN, UK — 6RRC "Kurchatov Institute", 123182, Moscow, Russia — 7Plasma Physics Group, Blackett Laboratory, Imperial College London, SW7 2BZ, UK
We report on the acceleration of ion beams from ultra-thin diamond-like carbon (DLC) foils of thickness 50, 30 and 10 nm irradiated by ultra-high contrast laser pulses at intensities of ∼ 7×1019 W/cm2. An unprecedented maximum energy of 185 MeV (>15 MeV/u) for fully ionized carbon atoms is observed at the optimum thickness of 30 nm. The enhanced acceleration is attributed to self-induced transparency, leading to strong volumetric heating of the classically over-dense electron population in the bulk of the target. Our experimental results are supported by one- and two-dimensional particle-in-cell (PIC) simulations.