Sweeping acceleration of high charge ion beams in the large spot size regime with the high repetition rate BELLA petawatt laser

ORAL

Abstract

We present an experimental study of ion acceleration using the BELLA petawatt laser. Enabled by the high repetition rate (1 Hz) of the laser, targetry and diagnostic we were able to conduct parameter scans involving >100 shots. In the large laser spot size regime, where the laser pulse length is much shorter than the laser spot size on target and is obliquely incident, the laser pulse duration needs to be optimized to obtain uniform plasma heating across the focal plane. Proton spectra from laser pulse duration scans (35 -600fs) reveal such a geometric optimization of the Target Normal Sheath Acceleration (TNSA). The field dynamics inferred from Particle-in-Cell simulations are used to unravel the interaction dynamics and provide further insights into the ion acceleration process.

*The work was supported by the LDRD program of LBNL and the U.S. DOE Office of Science Offices of HEP and FES, under Contract DE-AC02-05CH11231. This research used resources (Edison, Cori) of NERSC, and an award of computation time by the INCITE program using resources of ALCF both supported by the Office of Science of the U.S. DOE under Contracts DE-AC02-05CH11231 and AC02-06CH11357, respectively. J. H. Bin acknowledges financial support from the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation

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Presenters

  • Sven Steinke

    • Lawrence Berkeley Natl Lab

Authors

  • Sven Steinke

    • Lawrence Berkeley Natl Lab

  • Jianhui Bin

    • Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, USA
    • Lawrence Berkeley Natl Lab

  • Jaehong Park

    • Princeton University, Princeton, NJ, USA, Lawrence Berkeley Natl Lab, Berkeley, CA, USA
    • Lawrence Berkeley Natl Lab

  • Qing Ji

    • Lawrence Berkeley Natl Lab

  • Kei Nakamura

    • Lawrence Berkeley Natl Lab
    • LBNL

  • Anthony J Gonsalves

    • Lawrence Berkeley Natl Lab
    • Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, USA
    • LBNL

  • Stepan Bulanov

    • Univ of California - Berkeley
    • Lawrence Berkeley Natl Lab
    • Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory

  • Csaba Toth

    • Lawrence Berkeley Natl Lab
    • LBNL, LBNL

  • Jean-Luc Vay

    • Lawrence Berkeley Natl Lab

  • Carl B Schroeder

    • Lawrence Berkeley Natl Lab
    • LBNL

  • Cameron Guy Robinson Geddes

    • Lawrence Berkeley National Lab
    • Lawrence Berkeley Natl Lab
    • LBNL

  • Eric Esarey

    • Lawrence Berkeley Natl Lab
    • LBNL

  • Thomas Schenkel

    • Lawrence Berkeley Natl Lab

  • Wim Pieter Leemans

    • Lawrence Berkeley Natl Lab
    • Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, USA
    • Lawrence Berkeley Natl Lab, U.C. Berkeley
    • Lawrence Berkeley Natl Lab, Univ of California - Berkeley
    • LBNL, UC Berkeley