Generating high-energy highly charged ion beams from petawatt-class laser interactions with compound targets

Phys Rev Lett. 2012 Dec 14;109(24):245008. doi: 10.1103/PhysRevLett.109.245008. Epub 2012 Dec 14.

Abstract

A new method of generation of high-energy highly charged ion beams is proposed. The method is based on the interaction of petawatt circularly polarized laser pulses with high-Z compound targets consisting of two species of different charge-to-mass ratio. It is shown that highly charged ions produced by field ionization can be accelerated up to tens of MeV/u with ion (actually with Z ≤ 25) beam parameters like density and total charge inaccessible in conventional accelerators. A possibility of further ionization of the accelerated ion bunches in foil is also discussed.