[Table of Contents]

Plasma and Fusion Research

Volume 3, 035 (2008)

Regular Articles

Multi-Species Ion Acceleration in Expansion of Finite-Size Plasma Targets
Peiyong YE, Akira TAKATA, Masanori NUNAMI, Masakatsu MURAKAMI and Katsunobu NISHIHARA
Institute of Laser Engineering, Osaka University, Osaka 565-0871, Japan
(Received 8 March 2008 / Accepted 9 May 2008 / Published 7 July 2008)

Abstract

We investigate ion energy spectra of a droplet target composed of different ion species, which is assumed to be heated by ultrashort laser pulse. The dynamics is studied with three-dimensional particle-in-cell simulation. It is found that the maximum ion energy Ei,max of the ion species with a charge a state Z has proportionality, Ei,max ∝ Z2 , when multi-species ions exist in large quantities simultaneously. This is a crucial new result different from the scaling Ei,max ∝ Z, where the fraction of such contaminating ions is small compared with that of the background ions. We discuss this present numerical result by comparing with a self-similar solution, which takes a full account of the charge separation effect.

Keywords

ion acceleration, finite-size plasma, self-similar solution, charge separation effect, 3D PIC simulation

DOI: 10.1585/pfr.3.035

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This paper may be cited as follows:

Peiyong YE, Akira TAKATA, Masanori NUNAMI, Masakatsu MURAKAMI and Katsunobu NISHIHARA, Plasma Fusion Res. 3, 035 (2008).