Laser-driven heavy ion acceleration and its applications

Sakaki, Hironao

With the development of ultrashort-pulse high intensity laser systems and laser-handling techniques, a focused intensity becomes amount of light that reaches over 10W/cm. The laser is mainly applied to the study of a strong-electromagnetic field produced by laser-plasma interactions. We study this strong-electromagnetic field for a heavy-ion beam generation and acceleration (laser-driven ion acceleration) that show a particular property of laser-plasma interactions. It demonstrated by the laser irradiation with the intensity of 110 W/cm on the metal foil target. And, we measured highly-charge-state Fe ions accelerated up to 0.9 GeV are demonstrated with a 200 TW femtosecond high-intensity laser irradiating a micron-thick Al foil with Fe impurity on the surface. An energetic high-density beam of heavy ions with a large charge-to-mass ratio can be obtained, which is useful for many applications, such as a new-type heavy ion source.