Computational Study of Laser-Accelerated Proton Beam Transport in Solid Density Matters

Laser-accelerated proton beams produced from a spherically curved target can be focused to exceptionally high density (1019-1021 particles/cm3) and intense current (100s kA). The physics of such intense proton beam transport in solid-density matter is still not understood well and is important for high energy density physics.It is a major challenge to understand intense laser- accelerated proton beam transport in solid density matter self-consistently accounting for the matter's response to the intense beam and the beam's behavior in the matter. These proton beams can rapidly heat the matter to be a partially-ionized warm dense matter (WDM) state with density of 0.1~10 times solid and temperature of 1~100eV.In the WDM regime, proton stopping differs significantly from cold matter or an ideal fully ionized plasma [1-3]. Stopping calculations require a dynamic and spatial description taking into account the changes with the local heating, ionization, and collective effects during the beam transport.