Within the last decade, laser-ion acceleration has become a field of broad interest. The possibility to generate short proton- or heavy ion bunches with an energy of a few tens of MeV by table-top laser systems could open new opportunities for medical or technical applications. Nevertheless, today's laser-acceleration schemes lead mainly to a temperature-like energy distribution of the accelerated ions, a big disadvantage compared to mono-energetic beams from conventional accelerators. Recent results [1] of laser-ion acceleration using radiation-pressure appear promising to overcome this drawback. In this paper, we demonstrate the influence of a second counter-propagating laser pulse interacting with a nm-thick target, creating a well defined pre-plasma.

Experimental results on the acceleration of protons and carbon ions from ultra-thin polymer foils at intensities of up to 6x10(19)Wcm(-2) are presented revealing quasi-monoenergetic spectral characteristics for different ion species at the same time. For carbon ions and protons, a linear correlation between the cutoff energy and the peak energy is observed when the laser intensity is increased. Particle-in-cell simulations supporting the experimental results imply an ion acceleration mechanism driven by the radiation pressure as predicted for multi-component foils at these intensities.

We report on the absolute sensitivity calibration of an extreme ultraviolet (XUV) spectrometer system that is frequently employed to study emission from short-pulse laser experiments. The XUV spectrometer, consisting of a toroidal mirror and a transmission grating, was characterized at a synchrotron source in respect of the ratio of the detected to the incident photon flux at photon energies ranging from 15.5 eV to 99 eV. The absolute calibration allows the determination of the XUV photon number emitted by laser-based XUV sources, e.g., high-harmonic generation from plasma surfaces or in gaseous media. We have demonstrated high-harmonic generation in gases and plasma surfaces providing 2.3 μW and μJ per harmonic using the respective generation mechanisms.

We show experimentally that extreme ultraviolet radiation is produced when a laser pulse is Thomson backscattered from sheets of relativistic electrons that are formed at the rear surface of a foil irradiated on its front side with a high-intensity laser. An all-optical setup is realized using the Jena titanium: sapphire ten-terawatt laser system with an enhanced amplified spontaneous emission background of 10(-12). The main pulse is split into two: one of them accelerates electrons from thin aluminium foil targets to energies of the order of some MeV and the other, counterpropagating probe pulse Thomson-backscatters off these electrons when they exit the target rear side. The process produced photons within a wide spectral range of some tens of eV as a result of the broad electron energy distribution. The highest scattering intensity is observed when the probe pulse arrives at the target rear surface 100 fs after irradiation of the target front side by the pump pulse, corresponding to the maximum flux of hot electrons at the interaction region. These results can provide time-resolved information about the evolution of the rear-surface electron sheath and hence about the dynamics of the electric fields responsible for the acceleration of ions from the rear surface of thin, laser-irradiated foils.

Experimental results on relativistic surface HHG at a repetition rate of 10 Hz are presented. Average powers in the 10 mu W range are generated in the spectral range of 51 to 26 nm (24-48 eV). The surface harmonic radiation is produced by focusing the second-harmonic of a high-power laser onto a rotating glass surface to moderately relativistic intensities of 3 x 10(19) W cm(-2). The harmonic emission exhibits a divergence of 26 mrad. Together with absolute photon numbers recorded by a calibrated spectrometer, this allows for the determination of the extreme ultraviolet (XUV) yield. The pulse energies of individual harmonics are reaching up to the mu J level, equivalent to an efficiency of 10(-5). The capability of producing stable and intense high-harmonic radiation from relativistic surface plasmas may facilitate experiments on nonlinear ionization or the seeding of free-electron lasers.