Generation of high-quality charged particle beams during the acceleration of ions by high-power laser radiation

Numerous applications of protons and ions accelerated by laser radiation require charged particle beams of high quality (i.e., such that the ratio of the energy width of the beam to its mean energy is small). In order to produce beams with controlled quality, it is proposed to use two-layer targets in which the first layer consists of heavy multicharged. ions and the second layer (thin and narrow in the transverse direction) consists of protons. The possibility of generating a high-quality proton beam in the interaction of ultraintense laser radiation with such a two-layer target is demonstrated by two- and three-dimensional particle-in-cell computer simulations. (C) 2002 MAIK "Nauka/Interperiodica".