Efficient ion generation in laser-foil interaction

¹ Utsunomiya University, Utsunomiya 321-8585, Japan
² National University of Defense Technology, Changsha 410073, China
³ Fudan University, Shanghai 200433, China
⁴ Inst. of Physics, CAS, Beijing 100190, China
⁵ Shanghai Jiao Tong University, Shanghai 200240, China
⁶ Czech Technical University, CZ-182 121 Praha 8, Czech Republic
⁷ Inst. of Laser Physics, St. Petersburg 199034, Russia

^a e-mail: kwt@cc.utsunomiya-u.ac.jp

Published online: 15 November 2013

Abstract

A remarkable improvement is presented on the energy conversion efficiency from laser to protons in a laser-foil interaction by particle simulations. The total laser-proton energy conversion efficiency from laser to protons becomes 16.7%, though a conventional plane foil target serves a rather low efficiency. In our 2.5-dimensional particle-in-cell simulations the Al multihole structure is also employed, and the laser absorption ratio reaches 71.2%. The main physical reason for the enhancement of the conversion efficiency is a reduction of the laser reflection at the target surface area;