Improved ion bunch quality of conical target irradiated by ultra-intense and ultra-short laser

TL;DR

This study uses particle-in-cell simulations to optimize laser-target configurations, significantly improving the quality and energy of ion beams generated by ultra-intense lasers, with potential applications in synthesizing superheavy nuclei.

Contribution

It demonstrates how conical targets with specific angularity and polarization control can enhance ion beam quality and energy in laser-driven ion acceleration.

Findings

Linearly polarized lasers outperform circularly polarized lasers in beam quality.

Conical targets with left angularity and intermediate thickness yield higher ion energies.

Optimized configurations enable potential synthesis of superheavy nuclei.

Abstract

We conduct particle-in-cell simulations to estimate the effects of circularly and linearly polarized SEL 100 PW lasers on flat Th targets with thicknesses of 50 nm, 100 nm and 250 nm, as well as easy to manufacture conical Th targets with angularity either on the left or right. As the thickness of the three types of targets increases and under the same polarized laser, the average energy, maximum energy and energy conversion efficiency of Th ions decrease as it is well-known, and except for the circularly polarized laser hit on the conical target with angularity on the left, the Th ion beam emittance also decreases, while its beam intensity increases conversely. The linearly polarized laser, compared to the circularly polarized laser with the same laser intensity, exhibits higher beam intensity, beam emittance and energy conversion efficiency for the same type and thickness of Th target. The conical Th target with angularity on the left and intermediate thickness, compared to the flat target and conical target with angularity on the right of the same thickness, possesses both higher ion average energy up to 7 GeV and virtually the same beam intensity up to 0.8 MA under the linearly polarized laser. The results lead us to an easier way of controlling laser-accelerated high-quality heavy ion beam by switching to an optimal laser-target configuration scheme, which may enable the synthesis of superheavy nuclei in a high-temperature and high-density extreme plasma environment in astronuclear physics.