MeV Argon ion beam generation with narrow energy spread

TL;DR

This paper demonstrates the generation of a highly-collimated argon ion beam with a narrow energy spread using laser irradiation of an argon cluster target, supported by simulations revealing a novel scheme to reduce energy spread.

Contribution

It introduces a new method for producing narrow energy spread heavy ion beams via laser-driven plasma wakefield modulation, validated by experiments and simulations.

Findings

Argon ion beam with 0.19 MeV/nucleon energy spread at 0.39 MeV/nucleon.

Laser pulse effectively modulates plasma wakefield to narrow energy distribution.

Simulation identifies a scheme that cuts off low-energy ions, increasing mono-energeticity.

Abstract

Laser driven particle acceleration has shown remarkable progresses in generating multi-GeV electron bunches and 10s of MeV ion beams based on high-power laser facilities. Intense laser pulse offers the acceleration field of 1012 Volt per meter, several orders of magnitude larger than that in conventional accelerators, enabling compact devices. Here we report that a highly-collimated argon ion beam with narrow energy spread is produced by irradiating a 45-fs fully-relativistic laser pulse onto an argon cluster target. The highly-charged (Argon ion with charge state of 16+) heavy ion beam has a minimum absolute energy spread of 0.19 MeV per nucleon at the energy peak of 0.39 MeV per nucleon. we identify a novel scheme from particle-in-cell simulations that greatly reduces the beam energy spread. The laser-driven intense plasma wakefield has a strong modulation on the ion beam in a way that the low energy part is cut off. The pre-accelerated argon ion beam from Coulomb explosion thus becomes more mono-energetic and collimated.