Ultra-intense femtosecond super-heavy ion beams driven by a multi-PW laser

Highlights: • Acceleration of super-heavy ions by a multi-PW laser pulse is numerically studied. • Mechanisms of acceleration and properties of the produced ion beams are revealed. • Generation of ultra-intense femtosecond multi-GeV ion beams is demonstrated. - Abstract: The paper reports the results of numerical studies on the laser-driven acceleration of super-heavy ions by a multi-PW laser pulse of ultra-relativistic intensity attainable with the Extreme Light Infrastructure lasers currently being built in Europe. Using a multi-dimensional (2D3V) particle-in-cell code, it is shown that multi-GeV super-heavy (thorium) ion beams with an intensity of $\sim {10}^{21}\text{–}{10}^{22}\text{W}/{\text{cm}}^2$, fluence $\sim {10}^{17}\text{–}{10}^{18}{\text{cm}}^{-2}$ and time duration $\sim 20\text{–}100\text{fs}$ can be produced from a sub-μm thorium target irradiated by a 150-J, 20-fs laser pulse with an intensity of ${10}^{23}\text{W}/{\text{cm}}^2$. Such ion beams are impossible to obtain presently with the use of conventional RF-driven accelerators, so they can open the door to new areas of research in both nuclear and high energy-density physics.