Speaker
Description
Improved control of high intensity laser parameters, in particular with respect to temporal pulse contrast and spatio-temporal couplings, enabled the exploitation of proton acceleration mechanisms surpassing target normal sheath acceleration. Ultra-thin and near critical density targets provide access to cascades of acceleration regimes that boost energies well beyond 100 MeV [1], but also yield unprecedented laser energy to proton energy conversion. This presentation focuses on experiments performed at the DRACO PW laser at HZDR in this regime. It highlights recent progress made with cryogenic hydrogen jets [2] where of the order of 50 MeV proton beams could be generated with Joule-level few 10 TW pulses on thickness optimized flat hydrogen targets [unpublished] at a laser limited repetition rate of 1 Hz.
[1] T. Ziegler et al., Nature Physics 20, 1211 (2024)
[2] M. Rehwald, et al., Nature Communications 14, 4009 (2023)
| Working group | WG2 |
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