Acceleration of Heavy Ions by Ultrafast High-Peak-Power Lasers: Advances, Challenges and Perspectives

Laser-driven ion acceleration is a new, rapidly developing field of research and one of the important applications of ultrafast high-peak-power lasers. In this acceleration method, extremely strong electric fields, induced by an ultrafast laser in the plasma generated by the laser-target interaction, enable the acceleration of ions to relativistic velocities on pico-second time scales and at sub-millimetre distances. This opens the prospect of construct-ing a fundamentally new type of high-energy ion accelerator - less complex, more compact and cheaper than the ion accelerators operating today. This paper briefly discusses the basic mechanisms of heavy ion acceleration driven by an ultrafast high-peak-power laser and summarizes the advances in experimental and numerical studies of laser-driven heavy ion acceleration. The main challenges facing this research and the prospects for the application of laser-accelerated heavy ion beams are outlined.