Ion Acceleration driven by High-Intensity Laser Pulses

Within the framework of this thesis the ion acceleration from foils irradiated by high-intensity laser pulses was studied. The application of such laser accelerated ion beams could reach from compact fast-ion injectors for conventional particle accelerators over fast ignition for inertial confinement fusion to oncology and radiotherapy with ion beams. Proton imaging of laser produced plasmas is one application which had already great impact in exploring laser plasma dynamics with ps time resolution. For all applications it is necessary to understand the physical processes to be able to control the properties of the ion beam. In this work an analytical model could be derived which is purely based on the surface charge created by the laser accelerated electrons which pass the target and exit into vacuum at the rear side. The field of this surface charge is maintained for the duration of the laser pulse τL and, after field-ionizing atoms at the target rear side, accelerates the ions. The predicted maximum ion energies Em are in good agreement with experimental results obtained in this work and by other groups all over the world (Fig. 3). The found scalings are also confirmed by recent PIC simulations. In addition to protons also the acceleration of heavier ions was investigated. The appearance of different charge states raised questions about their origin for a long time. In all experiments heavy ions such as carbons are accelerated along with protons. Using the knife edge method not only the large source sizes for protons could be verified but also the source sizes of the different carbon charge states 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 0 0.2 0.4 0.6 0.8 1.0 1.2