High Energy electron and proton acceleration by circularly polarized laser pulse from near critical density hydrogen gas target

TL;DR

This study uses 3D particle-in-cell simulations to demonstrate high-energy electron and proton acceleration from near critical density hydrogen targets using circularly polarized laser pulses, revealing new insights into acceleration mechanisms and beam properties.

Contribution

It presents the first simulation of quasi-monoenergetic ring-shaped electron beams driven by circularly polarized lasers and details the plasma physics involved in high-energy proton acceleration.

Findings

Protons exceeding 200 MeV with over 6% conversion efficiency.

First simulation of ring-shaped quasi-monoenergetic electron beams.

Identification of plasma density and target thickness effects on acceleration.

Abstract

We demonstrate in this research the quasi-monoenergetic electron and proton acceleration through three dimensional particle-in-cell simulations of short petawatt circular polarized laser pulse interactions with near critical density hydrogen target. We numerically show that under controlled choice of laser and target parameters, the high energy electrons and protons can be illustrated in experiment at advanced high power laser facilities eg ELI - ALPS. We detailed the microphysics involved in the acceleration mechanism, which required investigating the role of plasma density gradients, plasma density, and target thickness. The role of selfgenerated plasma electric and magnetic fields is depicted on proton energy and density distribution. We numerically investigate here the laser driven proton acceleration where energetic protons with energies more than 200 MeV and charge in excess of 10 nC and conversion efficiency more than 6 percent (which implies 2.4 J proton beam out of the 40 J incident laser energy). Additionally and interestingly, we show from simulation study first time the quasi-monoenergetic ring shaped electron beam driven by circularly polarised laser which may prove useful for plasma based-based X-ray source and collimation of positron beam.