Meta-Analysis of Laser-Ion Acceleration

We showcase in-depth data extraction and analysis of existing laser-ion particle accelerator experiments, utilizing tools like Plot Digitizer for accurate data extraction from graphs. We compiled over 400 data points from 26 scientific papers on laser proton acceleration. Features collected include wavelength, intensity, pulse duration, target thickness, and the resulting maximum proton energy for each experiment. This will be the largest publicly available dataset, which will ensure organization and accessibility for ongoing and future research. We analyzed this dataset using a variety of statistical methods including correlation matrices, principal component analysis, and linear regression to uncover underlying patterns, outliers, and insight into designing future experiments, simulations, and machine learning models.