Scaling of proton acceleration driven by petawatt-laser-plasma interactions
Scaling of proton acceleration driven by petawatt-laser-plasma interactions
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DOI：
10.1038/nphys476
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发表时间：
2007-01-01
期刊：
影响因子：
19.6
通讯作者：
McKenna, P.
中科院分区：
文献类型：
--
作者：
Robson, L.;Simpson, P. T.;McKenna, P.
使用高功率激光产生高质量高能离子束的可能性正引起全球的广泛兴趣。在医学上使用激光加速质子的前景吸引了人们的特别兴趣，因为这些方案可能会导致紧凑和相对低成本的来源。在这些来源可以用于医学之前，剩下的挑战之一是增加加速的离子的数量和能量。在这里，我们扩展了实验研究质子标度的能量和强度范围，分别达到400J和6×10(20)W cm(-2)，并发现质子标度比先前预测的要慢。借助于等离子体膨胀模拟工具，我们的结果表明了时间相关和多维效应在预测这个超高强度区域的最大质子能量中的重要性。讨论了我们对质子标度的新理解对潜在的医学应用的影响。
The possibility of using high-power lasers to generate high-quality beams of energetic ions is attracting large global interest. The prospect of using laser-accelerated protons in medicine attracts particular interest, as these schemes may lead to compact and relatively low-cost sources. Among the challenges remaining before these sources can be used in medicine is to increase the numbers and energies of the ions accelerated. Here, we extend the energy and intensity range over which proton scaling is experimentally investigated, up to 400 J and 6 x 10(20) W cm(-2) respectively, and find a slower proton scaling than previously predicted. With the aid of plasma-expansion simulation tools, our results suggest the importance of time-dependent and multidimensional effects in predicting the maximum proton energy in this ultrahigh-intensity regime. The implications of our new understanding of proton scaling for potential medical applications are discussed.