High-energy protons from submicron-sized targets

Improving of intensity contrast ratio of intense short laser pulses is making it possible to use submicron-sized targets, both spherical and plane, in the interest of proton acceleration for different applications. The way of improving of the ion beam quality is utilization of targets with two ion species - heavy ions (majority) and light ions, e.g. protons, (minority). Two different approaches, analytical theory and particle-in-cell simulations (PIC) are presented for studying the characteristics of laser-triggered ions due to the Coulomb-like mechanism of particle acceleration from submicron-sized targets. The comparative analysis of explosions of heterogeneous (layered) and homogeneously mixed targets for production of best quality ion bunches has been performed. We also found the regime of anisotropic proton acceleration from spherical targets with light and heavy ions relevant to the experiments with submicron-diameter droplets from water spray target irradiated by an ultrashort intense laser pulse.