On the ion acceleration in microstructured targets by ultrashort intense laser pulses

The employment of microstructured targets for efficient ion acceleration by short intense laser pulses is discussed. We further examine recently proposed targets, such as foil with hole or foil with slice joint to its front surface, by two dimensional particle-in-cell (PIC) simulations. These microstructured targets enable to accelerate protons to higher maximum energies compared with simple thin foils due to additional acceleration of hot electrons during laser-target interaction. On the other hand, we found that the energy fluencies of protons accelerated in those specially designed targets are reduced compared with thin foils irradiated by obliquely incident laser pulses.

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