Stabilizing transverse ablative Rayleigh Taylor like instability by using elliptically polarized laser pulses in the hole-boring radiation pressure acceleration regime

TL;DR

This paper demonstrates that elliptically polarized lasers can effectively stabilize transverse Rayleigh Taylor-like instabilities in hole-boring radiation pressure acceleration, leading to more concentrated and intense ion beams.

Contribution

It introduces a stabilization method using elliptically polarized lasers based on the ross effect, supported by theoretical modeling and 2D Particle-in-Cell simulations.

Findings

Stabilization of transverse instabilities with elliptically polarized lasers.

Optimal polarization ratio range derived from theory.

Enhanced ion beam concentration and intensity.

Abstract

It is shown that the transverse Rayleigh Taylor like instability can be well stabilized by using elliptically polarized laser in the hole boring radiation pressure acceleration regime. The $\bm{J}\times\bm{B}$ effect of the laser will thermalize the local electrons and support a transverse diffusion mechanism of the ions, resulting in the stabilization of the short wavelength perturbations, which is quite similar to the ablative Rayleigh Taylor instability in the initial confinement fusion research. The proper range of polarization ratio is obtained from a theoretical model for the given laser intensity and plasma density. The stabilization mechanism is well confirmed by two dimensional Particle-in-Cell simulations, and the ion beam driven by the elliptically polarized laser is more concentrated and intense compared with that of the circularly polarized laser.