Monoenergetic ion beam acceleration from transversely confined near-critical plasmas by intense laser pulses

An advanced target for production of high-energy monoenergetic ion beams by intense laser pulses is proposed, in which the near-critical plasma is transversely confined between the high-Z dense wires. It is found that the ion acceleration is significantly enhanced due to the strong magnetic dipole vortex formed at the rear of the target, where large electron current density gradients from the wires to the vacuum exist. The magnetic dipole vortex helps to realize the contraction of ion momentum phase spaces and reduction of the beam divergence so that monenergetic, highly directed, and collimated ion beams can be obtained. Two-dimensional particle-in-cell simulations have shown that monoenergetic proton beams with a peak energy of 105 MeV and particle number about 2.2 × 1011 are produced by using the advanced target at a laser intensity of 2.7 × 1020 W/cm2 and a pulse duration of 0.65 ps.