Plasma jets and narrow bandwidth ion spectra from thin foils irradiated at high laser intensity

Evolution of collimated plasma jets and ion acceleration from micron to sub-micron thickness foils following the interaction of ultra intense (up to 3 ×10 W/cm) laser pulses is investigated. We characterized the correlation between laser intensity and target areal density for the formation of a supersonic dense plasma jet. With the maximum achievable intensity on target, jets with Mach number up to 10 have been observed from few microns thick Cu foils expanding longitudinally with a speed of 2×10 m/s. With circular polarization, the uniformity of jet density profile has improved significantly as compared to the jets observed from interaction of a linearly polarized laser. While the moderate energy (KeV) overdense plasma jets are formed efficiently for micron thickness target irradiated at 10 W/cm intensity, decreasing the target areal density or increasing irradiance on target leads to so-called light-sail RPA [1] regime in which the ions, independent of their charge to mass ratio, are accelerated to tens of MeV/nucleon