Abstract
Ultra-intense lasers produce and manipulate plasmas, allowing to locally generate extremely high static and electromagnetic fields. This study presents a concept of an ultra-intense optical tweezer, where two counter-propagating circularly polarized intense lasers of different frequencies collide on a nano-foil. Interfering inside the foil, lasers produce a beat wave, which traps and moves plasma electrons as a thin sheet with an optically controlled velocity. The electron displacement creates a plasma micro-capacitor with an extremely strong electrostatic field, that efficiently generates narrow-energy-spread ion beams from the multi-species targets, e.g. protons from the hydrocarbon foils. The proposed ion accelerator concept is explored theoretically and demonstrated numerically with the multi-dimensional particle-in-cell simulations.
Original language | English |
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Article number | 052002 |
Journal | New Journal of Physics |
Volume | 22 |
Issue number | 5 |
DOIs | |
State | Published - May 2020 |
Keywords
- laser ion acceleration
- plasma instability
- two frequency laser tweezer