Radiation Pressure Acceleration of Thin Foils with Circularly Polarized Laser Pulses

TL;DR

This paper introduces a novel regime for radiation pressure acceleration using circularly polarized laser pulses, enabling efficient production of monoenergetic GeV proton beams with minimal divergence, suitable for compact accelerators.

Contribution

It demonstrates a new acceleration regime with circular polarization that produces high-quality proton beams at unprecedented energies and efficiencies.

Findings

Proton beams reach GeV energies with high efficiency.

Beams have very small divergence angles (<4 degrees).

Method enables ultra-compact proton and ion accelerators.

Abstract

A new regime is described for Radiation Pressure Acceleration of a thin foil by an intense laser beam of above 10^20 W/cm^2. Highly monoenergetic proton beams extending to GeV energies can be produced with very high efficiency using circularly polarized light. The proton beams have a very small divergence angle (less than 4 degrees). This new method allows the construction of ultra-compact proton and ion accelerators with ultra-short particle bursts.