Physical Review Accelerators and Beams (Jul 2016)

Ion wave breaking acceleration

  • B. Liu,
  • J. Meyer-ter-Vehn,
  • K-U. Bamberg,
  • W. J. Ma,
  • J. Liu,
  • X. T. He,
  • X. Q. Yan,
  • H. Ruhl

DOI
https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevAccelBeams.19.073401
Journal volume & issue
Vol. 19, no. 7
p. 073401

Abstract

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Laser driven ion wave breaking acceleration (IWBA) in plasma wakefields is investigated by means of a one-dimensional (1D) model and 1D/3D particle-in-cell (PIC) simulations. IWBA operates in relativistic transparent plasma for laser intensities in the range of 10^{20}–10^{23} W/cm^{2}. The threshold for IWBA is identified in the plane of plasma density and laser amplitude. In the region just beyond the threshold, self-injection takes place only for a fraction of ions and in a limited time period. This leads to well collimated ion pulses with peaked energy spectra, in particular for 3D geometry.