Direct High-Power Laser Acceleration of Ions for Medical Applications

TL;DR

This paper explores how ultra-intense, focused laser beams can directly accelerate ions like protons and carbon nuclei to energies suitable for cancer therapy, highlighting advantages of radial polarization.

Contribution

It presents theoretical evidence that high-power laser beams can directly accelerate ions to therapeutic energies, emphasizing the benefits of radial polarization for energy spread.

Findings

Radially polarized lasers produce more favorable energy spread.

Focused multiterawatt and petawatt lasers can reach ion energies for cancer therapy.

Direct laser acceleration of ions is theoretically feasible at micron-scale distances.

Abstract

Theoretical investigations show that linearly and radially polarized multiterawatt and petawatt laser beams, focused to subwavelength waist radii, can directly accelerate protons and carbon nuclei, over micron-size distances, to the energies required for hadron cancer therapy. Ions accelerated by radially polarized lasers have generally a more favorable energy spread than those accelerated by linearly polarized lasers of the same intensity.