Generation of intense proton beams from plastic targets irradiated by an ultraintense laser pulse

Proton beams generated from thin aluminum and Mylar foil targets that are irradiated by a 30 fs Ti:sapphire laser pulse with an intensity of 2.2×10¹⁸ W∕cm² were investigated. Protons from the Mylar targets were observed to have an energy higher by a factor of 2 and were higher in number by an order of magnitude as compared with those generated from the aluminum targets. The maximum proton energy of 1.3±0.12 MeV obtained from the Mylar target was found to be similar with previous observations that used laser pulses with different intensities. To address the anomalous behavior of the maximum proton energy for plastic targets, an acceleration model is proposed. In this model, the protons are accelerated by a resistively induced electric field in the front of the target, which can account for the experimental observations.