High-density quasi-monoenergetic proton beam generation from vacuum sandwiched target

Abstract

An efficient scheme has been proposed for generating a high-density proton beam by enhancing the accelerating field from the interaction of an intense laser with a vacuum sandwiched target. The prime role of the vacuum gap is to reduce the effect of the sudden shock, exerted by the front edge of the intense laser, on the hydrogen layer. It is shown that the accelerated proton beam quality could be significantly enhanced due to the presence of the vacuum gap. We found that the total number of the accelerated protons is about 17.5 (1.7) and the proton beam peak is about 6.5 (3.7) times higher as compared to the single (double) layer target case. The dependence of the proton acceleration on the different layer thickness, density, and laser pulse intensity has also been studied.