| Paper | Title | Page |
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| MOPEA013 | Laser-driven Proton Accelerator for Medical Application | 88 |
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The interaction between the high intensity laser and the solid target produces a strong electrostatic proton acceleration field (1 TV/m) with extraordinary small size, contributing to downsizing of the particle accelerator. The proton beam exhibits significant features. having very small source size(~10 um), short pulse duration (~ps) and very low transverse emittance. However it is a diverging beam (half angle of ~10 deg) with wide energy spread of ~100 %. Because of these peculiar characteristics the proton beam attracts many fields for applications including medical applications. To preserve these peculiar characteristics, which are not possessed by those beams from the conventional accelerators, towards the irradiation points, we need to establish a peculiar beam transport line. As the first step, here we report the demonstration of the proto-type laser-driven proton medical accelerator beam line in which we combine the laser-driven proton source with the beam transport technique already established in the conventional accelerator for the purpose of comparison between the data and the particle transport simulation code, PARMILA*. *Harunori Takeda, 2005, Parmila LANL (LA-UR-98-4478). |
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| THPEC003 | Stabilization of Laser Accelerated Electron Bunch by the Ionization-stage Control | 4062 |
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The pointing stability and the divergence of a quasi-monoenergetic electron bunch generated in a self-injected laser-plasma acceleration regime were investigated. Gas-jet targets have been irradiated with focused 40 fs laser pulses at the 4-TW peak power. A pointing stability of 2.4 mrad root-mean-square (RMS) and a beam divergence of 10.6 mrad (RMS) were obtained using argon gas-jet target for 50 sequential shots, while these values were about three times smaller than at the optimum condition using helium. In particular, the peak electron energy was 9 MeV using argon, which is almost three times lower than that using helium. This result implies that the formation of the wake-field is different between argon and helium, and it plays an important role in the generation of a electron bunch. This stabilization scheme is available for another gas material such as nitrogen. At nitrogen gas-jet target, the pointing stability is more improved to 1.4 times smaller (1.7 mrad (RMS)) than that in argon gas-jet target and the peak energy is increased to grater than 40 MeV. These results prove that this method not only stabilize the e-beam but also allows controlling the electron energy. |
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| THPD039 | Proton Generation Driven by a High Intensity Laser Using a Thin-foil Target | 4366 |
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High-intensity laser and thin-foil interactions produce high-energy particles, hard x-ray, high-order harmonics, and terahertz radiation. A proton beam driven by a high-intensity laser has received attention as a compact ion source for medical applications. We have performed the high intensity laser-matter interaction experiments using a thin-foil target irradiated by Ti:sapphire laser (J-KAREN) at JAEA. In this laser system, the pulse duration is 40 fs (FWHM). The laser beam is focused by an off-axis parabolic mirror at the target. The estimated peak intensity is ~5x1019 W/cm2. We have developed on-line real time monitors such as a time-of-flight proton spectrometer which is placed behind the target and interferometer for electron density profile measurement of preformed plasma. We observed the maximum proton energy of ~7 MeV. |
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| MOPEA059 | Laser Acceleration of Negative Ions by Coulomb Implosion Mechanism | 211 |
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Intense laser pulse is utilized to generate compact sources of electrons, ions, x-rays, neutrons. Recently, high energy negative ions are also observed in experiments using cluster or gas target*. To explain the acceleration of negative ions from laser-generated plasmas, we proposed Coulomb implosion mechanism**. When clusters or underdense plasmas are irradiated by an intense laser pulse, positive ions are accelerated inside the clusters or in the self-focusing channel by the Coulomb explosion. This could lead to the acceleration of negative ions towards target center. The maximum energy of negative ions is typically several times lower than that of positive ions. A theoretical description and corresponding Particle-in-Cell simulations of Coulomb implosion mechanism are presented. We show the evidence of the negative ion acceleration observed in our experiments using high intensity laser pulse and the cluster-gas targets. * S.Ter-Avetisyan et al., J. Phys. B 37 (2004) 3633. |