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Pogorelsky, I.

Paper Title Page
THPD072 Laser Energy Conversion to Solitons and Monoenergetic Protons in Near-critical Hydrogen Plasma 4446
 
  • I. Pogorelsky, M. Babzien, M.N. Polyanskiy, V. Yakimenko
    BNL, Upton, Long Island, New York
  • N. Dover, Z. Najmudin, C.A.J. Palmer, J. Schreiber
    Imperial College of Science and Technology, Department of Physics, London
  • G. Dudnikova
    UMD, College Park, Maryland
  • M. Ispiryan, P. Shkolnikov
    Stony Brook University, StonyBrook
 
 

Recent theoretical and experimental studies point to better efficiency of laser-driven ion acceleration when approaching the critical plasma density regime. Simultaneously, this is the condition for observing solitons: "bubble"-like quasi-stationary plasma formations with laser radiation trapped inside. Exploring this regime with ultra-intense solid state lasers is problematic due to the lack of plasma sources and imaging methods at ~1021/cc electron density. The terawatt picosecond CO2 laser operated at Brookhaven's Accelerator Test Facility offers a solution to this problem. At 10 μm laser wavelength, the CO2 laser shifts the critical plasma density to 1019/cc which is attainable with gas jets and can be optically probed with visible light. Capitalizing on this approach, we focused a circular-polarized CO2 laser beam with a0=0.5 onto a hydrogen gas jet and observed monoenergetic proton beams in the 1 MeV range. Simultaneously, the laser/plasma interaction region has been optically probed with a 2nd harmonic picosecond Nd:YAG laser to reveal stationary soliton-like plasma formations. 2D PIC simulations agree with experimental results and aid in their interpretation.