Eur. Phys. J. D 55, 393-398 (2009)
https://doi.org/10.1140/epjd/e2009-00250-2

Ponderomotive ion acceleration in dense plasmas at super-high laser intensities

¹ Laboratoire d'Optique Appliquée, ENSTA, École Polytechnique, CNRS, 91761 Palaiseau Cedex, France
² GSI Helmholtzzentrum für Schwerionenforschung GmbH, Planckstrasse 1, 64291 Darmstadt, Germany
³ Centre Lasers Intenses et Applications, Université Bordeaux 1, CEA, CNRS, 33405 Talence Cedex, France
⁴ Laboratoire pour l'Utilisation des Lasers Intenses, CNRS, CEA, École Polytechnique, Université Pierre et Marie Curie, 91128 Palaiseau Cedex, France
⁵ Space Physics Research Laboratory, University of Michigan, 48109, Ann Arbor, Michigan, USA
⁶ Institut de la Lumière Extrême, ENSTA, École Polytechnique, CNRS, 91761 Palaiseau Cedex, France

Corresponding author: ^a t.schlegel@gsi.de

Received: 20 December 2008
Revised: 10 June 2009
Published online: 19 September 2009

Abstract

Short laser pulses at super-high intensities such as those proposed in the Extreme Light Infrastructure (ELI) project open new prospects for efficient acceleration of ions in overdense plasmas. A simple analytical model and numerical simulations demonstrate that pulses with intensities exceeding 10²² W/cm² may efficiently accelerate ions to high energies up to a few GeV. Maximum ion energy and the energy spectrum of the accelerated ions can be tuned by an appropriate choice of laser pulse intensity and duration at a given plasma density distribution.