Physical Review Accelerators and Beams (Jul 2016)
Ion wave breaking acceleration
Abstract
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.