Speaker
Description
The “peeler” scheme, originally proposed for proton acceleration, involves irradiating the narrow (sub-micron) side of a solid tape target. The large number of extracted electrons travel to the target rear and create a strong space charge field, which accelerates and collimates hydrogen ions found in the contaminant layer. However, the energy spectrum of higher Z (such as carbon) ion bunches is still thermal-like. Using full 3D particle-in-cell simulations with the particle-in-cell code SMILEI, we optimize this process in order to obtain high peak energy, quasi-monochromatic and low divergence carbon ion beams. Thus, with a PW-class laser, we can obtain 1e8 carbon ions with peak energy ~110 MeV/u, with a divergence of 20 degrees in the vertical plane and ~1 degree in the horizontal plane. With these parameters, the scheme is attractive for practical applications such as heavy ion radiotherapy, higher resolution diagnostics of extreme plasma states, ion fusion studies, and nuclear physics.
