Laser-ion acceleration through controlled surface contamination

Hou, Bixue and Nees, John A. and He, Zhaohan and Petrov, George and Davis, Jack and Easter, James H. and Thomas, Alexander George Roy and Krushelnick, Karl (2011) Laser-ion acceleration through controlled surface contamination. Physics of Plasmas, 18: 040702. ISSN 1070-664X

Abstract

In laser-plasma ion accelerators, control of target contamination layers can lead to selection of accelerated ion species and enhancement of acceleration. To demonstrate this, deuterons up to 75 keV are accelerated from an intense laser interaction with a glass target simply by placing 1 ml of heavy water inside the experimental chamber prior to pumping to generate a deuterated contamination layer on the target. Using the same technique with a deuterated-polystyrene-coated target also enhances deuteron yield by a factor of 3 to 5, while increasing the maximum energy of the generated deuterons to 140 keV.