Andrea Macchi

TL;DR: An overview of the state of the art of ion acceleration by laser pulses as well as an outlook on its future development and perspectives are given in this article. But the main features observed in the experiments, the observed scaling with laser and plasma parameters, and the main models used both to interpret experimental data and to suggest new research directions are described.

TL;DR: The acceleration of ions in the interaction of high intensity laser pulses with overdense plasmas is investigated with particle-in-cell simulations and a simple analytical model provides scaling laws for the ion bunch energy and generation time as a function of pulse intensity and plasma density.

TL;DR: The dynamics of the acceleration of ultrathin foil targets by the radiation pressure of superintense, circularly polarized laser pulses is investigated by analytical modeling and particle-in-cell simulations and it is shown that for "optimal" values of the foil thickness only a thin layer at the rear side is accelerated by radiation pressure.

TL;DR: The spectral features provide evidence of a multispecies scenario of radiation pressure acceleration in the light sail mode and indicates that monoenergetic peaks with more than 100 MeV/nucleon are obtainable with moderate improvements of the target and laser characteristics, which are within reach of ongoing technical developments.

TL;DR: In this paper, the acceleration of multi-MeV protons from the rear surface of thin solid foils irradiated by an intense ($\ensuremath{\sim}{10}^{18}\text{ }\text{ W}/{\mathrm{cm}}^{2}$) and short (1.5