Proton driven acceleration by intense laser pulses irradiating thin hydrogenated targets

Abstract The Asterix iodine laser of the PALS laboratory in Prague, operating at 1315 nm fundamental frequency, 300 ps pulse duration, 600 J maximum pulse energy and 1016 W/cm2 intensity, is employed to irradiate thin hydrogenated targets placed in high vacuum. Different metallic and polymeric targets allow to generate multi-energetic and multi-specie ion beams showing peculiar properties. The plasma obtained by the laser irradiation is monitored, in terms of properties of the emitted charge particles, by using time-of-flight techniques and Thomson parabola spectrometer (TPS). A particular attention is given to the proton beam production in terms of the maximum energy, emission yield and angular distribution as a function of the laser energy, focal position (FP), target thickness and composition.