Ion acceleration in "dragging field" of a light-pressure-driven piston

TL;DR

This paper introduces a novel ion acceleration scheme combining shock wave and light pressure acceleration, enabling protons to reach hundreds of GeV energies using a laser-driven piston in plasma.

Contribution

The paper presents a new acceleration method that surpasses traditional light pressure acceleration by utilizing a relativistic piston to trap and reflect background protons to ultra-high energies.

Findings

Protons can reach energies of several hundred GeV.

The scheme combines shock wave and light pressure acceleration.

Simulations confirm the potential for ultra-high energy proton beams.

Abstract

We propose a new acceleration scheme that combines shock wave acceleration (SWA) and light pressure acceleration (LPA). When a thin foil driven by light pressure of an ultra-intense laser pulse propagates in underdense background plasma, it serves as a shock-like piston, trapping and reflecting background protons to ultra-high energies. Unlike in SWA, the piston velocity is not limited by the Mach number and can be highly relativistic. Background protons can be trapped and reflected forward by the enormous "dragging field" potential behind the piston which is not employed in LPA. Our one- and two-dimensional particle-in-cell simulations and analytical model both show that proton energies of several tens to hundreds of GeV can be obtained, while the achievable energy in simple LPA is below 10 GeV.