The LICPA accelerator of dense plasma and ion beams

Abstract

Laser-induced cavity pressure acceleration (LICPA) is a novel scheme of acceleration of dense matter having a potential to accelerate plasma projectiles with the energetic efficiency much higher than the achieved so far with other methods. In this scheme, a projectile placed in a cavity is irradiated by a laser beam introduced into the cavity through a hole and accelerated along a guiding channel by the thermal pressure created in the cavity by the laser-produced plasma or by the photon pressure of the ultraintense laser radiation trapped in the cavity. This paper summarizes briefly the main results of our recent LICPA studies, in particular, experimental investigations of ion beam generation and heavy macroparticle acceleration in the hydrodynamic LICPA regime (at moderate laser intensities ∼ 1015W/cm2) and numerical, particle-in-cell (PIC) studies of production of ultraintense ion beams and fast macroparticles using the photon pressure LICPA regime (at high laser intensities > 1020 W/cm2). It is shown that in both LICPA regimes the macroparticles and ion beams can be accelerated much more efficiently than in other laser-based acceleration scheme commonly used and the accelerated plasma/ion bunches can have a wide variety of parameters. It creates a prospect for a broad range of applications of the LICPA accelerator, in particular in such domains as high energy density physics, ICF research (ion fast ignition, impact ignition) or nuclear physics. © Published under licence by IOP Publishing Ltd.