Study of Particle Acceleration with High Power Laser-Foam Interactions

ORAL

Abstract

Ion acceleration through laser-plasma interactions has been a subject of research for several decades [1-3]. It is widely recognized that enhancing laser absorption in plasmas is an effective method to boost laser-driven proton acceleration. Recent studies have concentrated on using near critical density (NCD) homogenous plasmas, double-layer targets and chemically produced foams to improve the conversion of laser energy into accelerated protons [4-6]. Advances in adaptive manufacturing (AM) techniques have enabled the rapid creation of low-density porous materials with specified morphologies and spatial profiles, making them highly suitable for high-energy density physics (HEDP) experiments.

In this study, we designed a CH plastic AM foam target with a log-pile configuration and examined the impact of AM foam targets with varying densities (ne~1020-1021 cm-3) and pore sizes (depends on log size and location) on ion acceleration. 2D Particle-in-Cell (PIC) codes were employed to explore ion acceleration using a high intensity laser with a dimensionless laser amplitude of a0=15 and a pulse duration of 40 fs for linearly (LP) and circularly (CP) polarized laser beams to understand the effect of foam structure on particle acceleration.

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Publication: 1. High-Energy Ions from Near-Critical Density Plasmas via Magnetic Vortex Acceleration, T. Nakamura, S. V. Bulanov, T. Zh. Esirkepov, and M. Kando, Phys. Rev. Lett. 105, 135002 (2010)
2. Fast ion acceleration in ultraintense laser interactions with an overdense plasma H. Habara, R. Kodama, Y. Sentoku, N. Izumi, Y. Kitagawa, K. A. Tanaka, K. Mima, and T. Yamanaka Phys. Rev. E 69, 036407 (2004)
3. Ion acceleration by superintense laser-plasma interaction, A. Macchi, M. Borghesi, and M.Passoni, Rev. Mod. Phys. 85, 751(2013)
4. Ultra-intense laser interaction with nanostructured near-critical plasmas
L. Fedeli, A. Formenti, L. Cialfi, A. Pazzaglia & M. Passoni , Scientific Reports 8:3834 (2018)
5. Ion generation in a low-density plastic foam by interaction with intense femtosecond laser pulses, S. Okihara, T. Zh. Esirkepov, K. Nagai, S. Shimizu, F. Sato, M. Hashida, T. Iida, K. Nishihara, T. Norimatsu, Y. Izawa, and S. Sakabe, Phys. Rev. E 69, 026401 (2004)
6. Laser ion acceleration using a solid target coupled with a low-density layer A. Sgattoni, P. Londrillo, A. Macchi, and M. Passoni, Phys. Rev. E 85, 036405 (2012)

Presenters

  • Ozgur Culfa

    University of California, San Diego, UC San Diego

Authors

  • Ozgur Culfa

    University of California, San Diego, UC San Diego

  • Mathieu Bailly-Grandvaux

    University of California, San Diego

  • Farhat N Beg

    University of California, San Diego, UC San Diego