University of Pecs, Pécs, Hungary
Many ion acceleration techniques have been suggested and thoroughly studied in the last two decades*. One of the promising techniques is the Coulomb explosion acceleration (CEA)**. Using CEA in clusters could result in symmetric acceleration if there are not any other significant mechanisms. We proposed a THz-driven accelerator scheme that is based on CEA in proton, deuterium and heavy water gas plasmas. Two counter-propagating THz pulses are focused to the ionized region of the gas jet. Following the ripping of the electrons from the gas plasmas by ultrafast standing waves, the Coulomb explosion accelerates the positive ions. According to our calculation, using 2 x 34 mJ THz pulses electrons and protons with 1.1 nC charge are accelerated up to 0.4 MeV and 0.1 MeV, respectively. The total energy of the particles is 0.7 % of the energy of the THz pulses. We examined the effect of the initial bunch charge, bunch size and shape on the final energy spectra and the directional distribution of the particles. Our presented technique is scalable from a few µm to a few thousand µm driving wavelengths and can be used for electron and heavy-ion acceleration.
*J. Badziak, IOP Conf. Series: J Phys: Conf. Series 959, 012001 (2018).
** M. Murakami and K. Mima, Phys. of Plasmas 16, 103108 (2009).
