Shen X F, Qiao B, Zhang H, Kar S, Zhou C T, Chang H X, Borghesi M, He X T
Center for Applied Physics and Technology, HEDPS, State Key Laboratory of Nuclear Physics and Technology, and School of Physics, Peking University, Beijing 100871, China.
Collaborative Innovation Center of IFSA (CICIFSA), Shanghai Jiao Tong University, Shanghai 200240, China.
Phys Rev Lett. 2017 May 19;118(20):204802. doi: 10.1103/PhysRevLett.118.204802. Epub 2017 May 18.
A method to achieve stable radiation pressure acceleration (RPA) of heavy 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 heavy ion foil with comoving electrons in the light-sail acceleration stage due to its successive 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 in RPA are significantly offset and suppressed so that stable acceleration of heavy ions are maintained. Particle-in-cell simulations show that a monoenergetic Al^{13+} beam with peak energy 3.8 GeV and particle number 10^{10} (charge >20 nC) can be obtained at intensity 10^{22} W/cm^{2}.
