Radiation induced acceleration of ions in a laser irradiated transparent foil

Abstract

Radiation friction can have a substantial impact on electron dynamics in a transparent target exposed to a strong laser pulse. In particular, by modifying quiver electron motion, it can strongly enhance the longitudinal charge separation field, thus inducing ion acceleration. We present a model and simulation results for such a radiation induced ion acceleration regime and study the scalings of the maximal attainable and average ion energies with respect to the laser and target parameters. We also compare the performance of this mechanism to the conventional ones.