High-intensity laser-driven proton acceleration enhancement from hydrogen containing ultrathin targets

Dollar, F. and Reed, S. A. and Matsuoka, T. and Bulanov, S. S. and Chvykov, V. and Kalintchenko, G. and McGuffey, C. and Rousseau, P. and Thomas, A. G. R. and Willingale, L. and Yanovsky, V. and Litzenberg, D. W. and Krushelnick, K. and Maksimchuk, A. (2013) High-intensity laser-driven proton acceleration enhancement from hydrogen containing ultrathin targets. Applied Physics Letters, 103 (14): 141117. ISSN 0003-6951

Abstract

Laser driven proton acceleration experiments from micron and submicron thick targets using high intensity (2 x 10(21) W/cm(2)), high contrast (10(-15)) laser pulses show an enhancement of maximum energy when hydrogen containing targets were used instead of non-hydrogen containing. In our experiments, using thin (