Stabilized Radiation Pressure Dominated Ion Acceleration from Thin-foil Targets

TL;DR

This paper investigates how controlling electron heating effects influences the stability and quality of ion acceleration in radiation pressure dominated regimes, using multi-dimensional PIC simulations.

Contribution

It introduces a method of using surface erosion to tailor transverse electron temperature, enhancing ion acceleration performance and stability.

Findings

Surface erosion improves ion peak energy.

Transverse electron temperature control suppresses instabilities.

Enhanced spectral quality of accelerated ions.

Abstract

We study transverse and longitudinal electron heating effects on the target stability and the ion spectra in the radiation pressure dominated regime of ion acceleration by means of multi dimensional particle-in-cell (PIC) simulations. Efficient ion acceleration occurs when the longitudinal electron temperature is kept as low as possible. However, tailoring of the transverse electron temperature is required in view of suppressing the transverse instability, which can keep the target structure intact for longer duration during the acceleration stage. We suggest using the surface erosion of the target to increase the transverse temperature, which improves both the final peak energy and the spectral quality of the ions in comparison with a normal flat target.