Reducing ion energy spread in hole-boring radiation pressure acceleration by using two-ion-species targets

TL;DR

This paper demonstrates that using two-ion-species targets in hole-boring radiation pressure acceleration significantly reduces ion energy spread by suppressing electric field oscillations, leading to more monoenergetic ion beams.

Contribution

It introduces a novel approach of employing two-ion-species targets to effectively minimize ion energy spread in laser-driven ion acceleration.

Findings

Energy spread reduced to 3.7% in simulations

Electric field oscillations are suppressed with two-ion-species targets

Ion bunches become more numerous and less charged

Abstract

The generation of fast ion beams in the hole-boring radiation pressure acceleration by intense laser pulses has been studied for targets with different ion components. We find that the oscillation of the longitudinal electric field for accelerating ions can be effectively suppressed by using a two-ion-species target, because fast ions from a two-ion-species target are distributed into more bunches and each bunch bears less charge. Consequently, the energy spread of ion beams generated in the hole-boring radiation pressure acceleration can be greatly reduced down to 3.7% according to our numerical simulation.