Selective Deuterium Ion Acceleration Using the Vulcan PW Laser

TL;DR

This paper demonstrates a method to selectively accelerate deuterium ions using a high-energy petawatt laser, achieving high purity and efficiency in ion beam production through cryogenic water vapor freezing.

Contribution

It introduces a novel application of cryogenic water vapor coating to produce highly pure deuterium ion beams with significant energy and efficiency using TNSA.

Findings

Deuterium ion beam with >99% purity was achieved.

Peak deuterium ion energy reached 14 MeV/nucleon.

Laser-to-deuterium-ion energy conversion efficiency was 4.3% above 0.7 MeV/nucleon.

Abstract

We report on the successful demonstration of selective acceleration of deuterium ions by target-normal sheath acceleration (TNSA) with a high-energy petawatt laser. TNSA typically produces a multi-species ion beam that originates from the intrinsic hydrocarbon and water vapor contaminants on the target surface. Using the method first developed by Morrison, et al.,$^{1}$ an ion beam with $>$99$\%$ deuterium ions and peak energy 14 MeV/nucleon is produced with a 200 J, 700 fs, $>10^{20} W/cm^{2}$ laser pulse by cryogenically freezing heavy water (D$_{2}$O) vapor onto the rear surface of the target prior to the shot. Within the range of our detectors (0-8.5$^{\circ}$), we find laser-to-deuterium-ion energy conversion efficiency of 4.3$\%$ above 0.7 MeV/nucleon while a conservative estimate of the total beam gives a conversion efficiency of 9.4$\%$.