Investigation of high intensity laser proton acceleration with underdense targets

In the last few years, intense research has been conducted on laser-accelerated ion sources and their applications. Recently, experiments have shown that a gaseous target can produce proton beams with characteristics comparable to those obtained with solid targets. In underdense laser proton acceleration, volume effects dominate the acceleration, while in target normal sheath acceleration, the electric field value is directly related to the electron surface density. Using Particle-In-Cell simulations, we have studied in detail the effect of an underdense density gradient on proton acceleration with high intensity lasers. Underdense laser ion acceleration strongly depends on the length, the shape and the amplitude of the density gradient and on the laser pulse shape. The accelerated proton beam characteristics in the shock-like regime are very promising.