The Recent Achievements on the Laser-Driven High Energy Ion Research

Abstract

A quarter century has been passed since the discovery of high energy proton beam from the interaction between high intensity laser pulse and solid density targets. However, the controllability of the beam is not good enough for being used in many applications. Although high energy ion beam is desired from many fields of applications, proton with energy greater than 100 MeV was not easily accelerated. We show that the laser temporal pulse condition is a key for controlling the ion acceleration performance and demonstrated for the first time that the same ion acceleration performance is reproduced in two independent PW-class laser systems by tuning the temporal pulse condition exactly same. Furthermore, with even careful controlling of the laser temporal pulse condition, ～150 MeV proton beam is obtained by only 22 J laser on target, which is the world record so far.