ORIGINAL RESEARCH article
Front. Phys.
Sec. Fusion Plasma Physics
Volume 13 - 2025 | doi: 10.3389/fphy.2025.1666941
This article is part of the Research TopicHigh-Intensity Laser Driven Probes for Applications, HED, and Fusion SciencesView all articles
Energy partition of fast ions and fast electrons in a foil plasma expansion under continuous irradiation of kJ petawatt laser light
Provisionally accepted
Natsumi Iwata*
Yasuhiko Sentoku- Osaka University, Suita, Japan
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Kilojoule-class relativistic intensity lasers having multi-picosecond (ps) pulse durations can produce fast ions efficiently in the interaction with thin foil plasmas by the target normal sheath acceleration. We derive the energy partition of fast ions and fast electrons in the expansion of a thin foil plasma irradiated by a relativistic intensity laser over picoseconds. As the expansion proceeds with the continuous laser heating, both ion and electron energies increase simultaneously. We here show that the energy partition between fast electrons and fast ions converges to a steady-state level on a ps time scale. The level is determined by the time dependence of the effective temperature of fast electrons and the dimension of the momentum space. The steady-state level is verified by particle-in-cell simulations. The theory can be used to predict the energy conversion efficiency from laser to fast ions for applications such as laser-driven proton source.
Keywords: Ion acceleration, kJ petawatt laser, high intensity laser plasma interaction, Plasma expansion, particle-in-cell simulation
Received: 16 Jul 2025; Accepted: 29 Aug 2025.
Copyright: © 2025 Iwata and Sentoku. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
* Correspondence: Natsumi Iwata, Osaka University, Suita, Japan
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