RESUMEN
We present a study of laser-driven ion acceleration with micrometer and submicrometer thick plastic targets. Using laser pulses with high temporal contrast and an intensity of the order of 10^{20} W/cm^{2} we observe proton beams with cutoff energies in excess of 85 MeV and particle numbers of 10^{9} in an energy bin of 1 MeV around this maximum. We show that applying the target normal sheath acceleration mechanism with submicrometer thick targets is a very robust way to achieve such high ion energies and particle fluxes. Our results are backed with 2D particle in cell simulations furthermore predicting cutoff energies above 200 MeV for acceleration based on relativistic transparency. This predicted regime can be probed after a few technically feasible adjustments of the laser and target parameters.
RESUMEN
We report on the experimental characterisation of laser-driven ion beams using a Thomson Parabola Spectrometer (TPS) equipped with trapezoidally shaped electric plates, proposed by Gwynne et al. [Rev. Sci. Instrum. 85, 033304 (2014)]. While a pair of extended (30 cm long) electric plates was able to produce a significant increase in the separation between neighbouring ion species at high energies, deploying a trapezoidal design circumvented the spectral clipping at the low energy end of the ion spectra. The shape of the electric plate was chosen carefully considering, for the given spectrometer configuration, the range of detectable ion energies and species. Analytical tracing of the ion parabolas matches closely with the experimental data, which suggests a minimal effect of fringe fields on the escaping ions close to the wedged edge of the electrode. The analytical formulae were derived considering the relativistic correction required for the high energy ions to be characterised using such spectrometer.