Control of laser-accelerated proton beams by modifying the target density with ASE

Yogo, Akifumi; Kiriyama, Hiromitsu; Mori, Michiaki; Esirkepov, T. Z.; Ogura, Koichi; Sagisaka, Akito; Orimo, Satoshi; Nishiuchi, Mamiko; Pirozhkov, A. S.; Nagatomo, Hideo*; Nakai, Yoshiki; Shimomura, Takuya; Tanoue, Manabu*; Akutsu, Atsushi; Okada, Hajime; Motomura, Tomohiro*; Kondo, Shuji; Kanazawa, Shuhei; Bulanov, S. V.; Bolton, P.; Daido, Hiroyuki

We demonstrate the laser-ion acceleration from a near-critical density plasma, when amplified spontaneous emission (ASE) was used to convert a solid foil target into the lower-density target. In this work, a direct comparison is made by changing the ASE intensity by factor 3 in order to investigate the target density-dependency of the laser-ion acceleration. The beam direction of high-energy component is successfully controlled by modifying the target density. The near-critical density plasma can be a favorable target to control the beam direction to be dependent on its energy.