CER SEMINAR

Laser-ion acceleration through chirped standing waves - benchmarked against other schemes

Felix Mackenroth, Max-Planck-Institute for the Physics of Complex Systems, Dresden, Germany
December 4, 2017, 11:00am - 12:00pm, SERF Room 232

ABSTRACT:

There exists an abundance of laser-based ion acceleration schemes from experimentally well-studied thermal target-normal sheath acceleration to more advanced schemes providing a favorable scaling of the ions' energies with increasing laser power. Most of these schemes are optimized for different ion beam parameters, such as energy, particle number or monochromaticity, rendering it difficult to compare their performance directly. A systematic approach to making them quantitatively comparable is to study the accelerated ions’ flux as a measure for the conversion efficiency of laser energy into ion kinetic energy [1]. We use this approach to benchmark several of the most common laser-ion acceleration schemes' performance against each other.

In comparison to these previously studied schemes, we also classify the recently proposed novel laser-ion acceleration scheme Chirped-standing-wave acceleration (CSWA) and demonstrate it to be highly competitive in terms of reachable ion energies and fluxes. This scheme makes use of chirped high-intensity laser pulses to gain enhanced control over the accelerated ions’ phase space distribution. The first proof-of-principle analysis promised favorable scaling properties of ion energies and fluxes while simultaneously offering unprecedented spatial and temporal control over the ion beam itself [2]. Finally, we highlight the scheme’s tunability and provide an outlook over its future development.

[1] F. Mackenroth, A. Gonoskov, M. Marklund, Eur. Phys. J. D 71, 204 (2017).
[2] F. Mackenroth, A. Gonoskov, M. Marklund, Phys. Rev. Lett., 117, 104801 (2016).

BIO:

The author received his undergraduate education in physics in Konstanz and Heidelberg, Germany, and did his PhD on quantum radiation in ultra-intense laser pulses under the supervision of PD Antonino Di Piazza in the quantum dynamics group of Prof. Keitel at the Max-Planck-Institute for Nuclear Physics in Heidelberg. For his PhD thesis he was awarded the Otto-Hahn medal of the Max-Planck-Society in 2013 and the thesis was selected to be published under the distinguished Springer Theses program. He then did a post-doc on relativistic plasma physics and laser-based ion acceleration at Chalmers Technical University in Gothenburg, Sweden, from 2014 to 2016. In late 2016 he moved back to Germany to join the Max-Planck-Institute for the Physics of Complex Systems in Dresden where he currently holds a position as Distinguished Postdoctoral Fellow.