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P: Fachverband Plasmaphysik

P 19: Poster: Sonstiges

P 19.5: Poster

Wednesday, April 1, 2009, 17:30–19:30, Foyer des IfP

Multi-stage laser ion acceleration — •Jens Polz¹, Oliver Jäckel¹, Sebastian M. Pfotenhauer¹, Hans-Peter Schlenvoigt¹, Jens Heymann¹, Malte C. Kaluza¹, Alexander Sävert¹, Amrutha Gopal¹, Sven Steinke², and Alex P. L. Robinson³ — ¹Institut für Optik und Quantenelektronik, Jena, Germany — ²Max-Born-Institut, Berlin, Germany — ³Rutherford Appleton Laboratory, Chilton, UK

During the last years, high-intensity lasers have shown to be a promising candidate for the production of high-energy particle beams. So far, the peak particle energy was limited by the available laser power. To overcome this limitation, staged acceleration schemes have been proposed. Here, we report the first experimental realization of such a staged acceleration. A proton population exhibiting a thermal energy spectrum was produced via target-normal sheath acceleration (TNSA) during the interaction of one part of the 10-TW JETI laser pulse with a thin foil. This proton beam propagated towards a second foil, where the second part of the laser generated a second TNSA field. This second field spectrally modulated the proton pulse, boosting a part of the population to higher energies. These results have been verified by numerical simulations. They clearly show that by applying staged acceleration schemes, one can overcome the limitations in peak energy set by the laser power.