Laser-Driven Ion Accelerators: State of the Art and Applications

Laser-plasma based accelerators of protons and heavier ions are a source of potential interest for several applications, including in the biomedical area. While the potential future use in cancer hadrontherapy acts as a strong aspirational motivation for this research field, radiobiology employing laser-driven ion bursts is already an active field of research. Here we give a summary of the state of the art in laser-driven ion acceleration, of the main challenges currently faced by the research in this field and of some of the current and future strategies for overcoming them.