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Prospects of target nanostructuring for laser proton acceleration
In laser-based proton acceleration, nanostructured targets hold the promise to allow for significantly boosted proton energies due to strong increase of laser absorption. We used laser-induced periodic surface structures generated in-situ as a very fast and economic way to produce nanostructured tar...
Autores principales: | , , , , , |
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Formato: | Online Artículo Texto |
Lenguaje: | English |
Publicado: |
Nature Publishing Group
2017
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Materias: | |
Acceso en línea: | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5349587/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/28290479 http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/srep44030 |
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author | Lübcke, Andrea Andreev, Alexander A. Höhm, Sandra Grunwald, Ruediger Ehrentraut, Lutz Schnürer, Matthias |
author_facet | Lübcke, Andrea Andreev, Alexander A. Höhm, Sandra Grunwald, Ruediger Ehrentraut, Lutz Schnürer, Matthias |
author_sort | Lübcke, Andrea |
collection | PubMed |
description | In laser-based proton acceleration, nanostructured targets hold the promise to allow for significantly boosted proton energies due to strong increase of laser absorption. We used laser-induced periodic surface structures generated in-situ as a very fast and economic way to produce nanostructured targets capable of high-repetition rate applications. Both in experiment and theory, we investigate the impact of nanostructuring on the proton spectrum for different laser–plasma conditions. Our experimental data show that the nanostructures lead to a significant enhancement of absorption over the entire range of laser plasma conditions investigated. At conditions that do not allow for efficient laser absorption by plane targets, i.e. too steep plasma gradients, nanostructuring is found to significantly enhance the proton cutoff energy and conversion efficiency. In contrast, if the plasma gradient is optimized for laser absorption of the plane target, the nanostructure-induced absorption increase is not reflected in higher cutoff energies. Both, simulation and experiment point towards the energy transfer from the laser to the hot electrons as bottleneck. |
format | Online Article Text |
id | pubmed-5349587 |
institution | National Center for Biotechnology Information |
language | English |
publishDate | 2017 |
publisher | Nature Publishing Group |
record_format | MEDLINE/PubMed |
spelling | pubmed-53495872017-03-17 Prospects of target nanostructuring for laser proton acceleration Lübcke, Andrea Andreev, Alexander A. Höhm, Sandra Grunwald, Ruediger Ehrentraut, Lutz Schnürer, Matthias Sci Rep Article In laser-based proton acceleration, nanostructured targets hold the promise to allow for significantly boosted proton energies due to strong increase of laser absorption. We used laser-induced periodic surface structures generated in-situ as a very fast and economic way to produce nanostructured targets capable of high-repetition rate applications. Both in experiment and theory, we investigate the impact of nanostructuring on the proton spectrum for different laser–plasma conditions. Our experimental data show that the nanostructures lead to a significant enhancement of absorption over the entire range of laser plasma conditions investigated. At conditions that do not allow for efficient laser absorption by plane targets, i.e. too steep plasma gradients, nanostructuring is found to significantly enhance the proton cutoff energy and conversion efficiency. In contrast, if the plasma gradient is optimized for laser absorption of the plane target, the nanostructure-induced absorption increase is not reflected in higher cutoff energies. Both, simulation and experiment point towards the energy transfer from the laser to the hot electrons as bottleneck. Nature Publishing Group 2017-03-14 /pmc/articles/PMC5349587/ /pubmed/28290479 http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/srep44030 Text en Copyright © 2017, The Author(s) http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article’s Creative Commons license, unless indicated otherwise in the credit line; if the material is not included under the Creative Commons license, users will need to obtain permission from the license holder to reproduce the material. To view a copy of this license, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ |
spellingShingle | Article Lübcke, Andrea Andreev, Alexander A. Höhm, Sandra Grunwald, Ruediger Ehrentraut, Lutz Schnürer, Matthias Prospects of target nanostructuring for laser proton acceleration |
title | Prospects of target nanostructuring for laser proton acceleration |
title_full | Prospects of target nanostructuring for laser proton acceleration |
title_fullStr | Prospects of target nanostructuring for laser proton acceleration |
title_full_unstemmed | Prospects of target nanostructuring for laser proton acceleration |
title_short | Prospects of target nanostructuring for laser proton acceleration |
title_sort | prospects of target nanostructuring for laser proton acceleration |
topic | Article |
url | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5349587/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/28290479 http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/srep44030 |
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