Ion acceleration using circularly polarized pulses: Physics and possible applications

The acceleration of ions in the interaction of ultrashort, high intensity, circularly polarized laser pulses with overdense plasmas has been theoretically investigated. By using particle-in-cell (PIC) simulations it is found that high-density, short duration ion bunches moving into the plasma are promptly generated at the laser-plasma interaction surface. This regime is qualitatively different from ion acceleration regimes driven by fast electrons such as sheath acceleration at the rear side of the target. A simple analytical model accounts for the numerical observations and provides scaling laws for the ion bunch velocity and generation time as a function of pulse intensity and plasma density. The ion bunches have moderate energies (100 keV-1 MeV) but very high density and low beam divergence, and might be of interest for problems of ultrafast compression, acceleration or heating of high-density matter. In particular, we have studied their application to the development of compact sources of fusion neutrons. We analyzed two target schemes showing that intense neutron bursts with femtosecond duration are produced.