High-energy monoenergetic protons from multistaged acceleration of thin double-layer target by circularly polarized laser

Multistaged acceleration of solid-density thin foils by ultraintense circularly polarized laser pulse is investigated. A stable radiation pressure acceleration (RPA) stage is first established. Higher dimensional effects such as transverse instabilities and enhanced electron heating then gradually make the initially opaque foil transparent to the laser light. Accordingly, the dominant acceleration mechanism changes smoothly from RPA to target normal sheath acceleration (TNSA). The transition can therefore enhance the maximum energy of the accelerated ions but broaden their energy spectrum. For a double-layer target, however, the light ions (protons) in the backlayer can be efficiently accelerated in the RPA and TNSA regimes nearly monoenergetically. Two-dimensional particle-in-cell simulations show that with this scheme a circularly polarized laser pulse of peak intensity 3.9 x 1022 W/cm(2) can produce a collimated proton bunch that persists for many Rayleigh lengths and its peak energy can reach 4.2 GeV with FWHM of 200 MeV. (C) 2011 American Institute of Physics. [doi:10.1063/1.3556124]