Laser production of highly charged ions

• Autor(a) principal: Láska,L.
• Data de Publicação: 2004
• Outros Autores: Badziak,J., Boody,F.P., Gammino,S., Jungwirth,K., Krása,J., Pfeifer,M., Rohlena,K., Ullschmied,J., Parys,P., Wolowski,J., Woryna,E., Torrisi,L.
• Tipo de documento: Artigo
• Idioma: eng
• Título da fonte: Brazilian Journal of Physics
• Texto Completo: http://old.scielo.br/scielo.php?script=sci_arttext&pid=S0103-97332004000800020

A summary of ion generation experiments at both low (10(9) W=cm²) and high (10(16) W=cm²) laser intensities, using Nd:YAG and iodine lasers, as well as the properties of the ions produced, are presented. Different medium- and high-Z elements were tested as a target: Ag, Al, Au, Co, Cu, Nb, Ni, Pb, Pt, Sn, Ta, W. A maximum charge state 55+ and maximum energy 34 MeV were recorded for Ta ions at high laser intensities, while the charge states up to 10+ and energies lower than 10 keV are characteristic for the region of low limit intensities. At laser intensities above 2 × 10(14) W=cm² conditions for the presence of nonlinear processes are fulfilled and ion acceleration due to ponderomotive force appears, in addition to the thermal and hot electron guided ambipolar acceleration. The existence of two production mechanisms for highly charged ions with charge states above z = 50+ has been demonstrated by changing the minimum focus position with regard to the target surface (by changing the interaction length with pre-formed plasma for relativistic self-focusing). Various potential applications of LIS are mentioned.