Highly efficient acceleration of dense plasma in the LICPA accelerator

Summary form only given. A commonly used laser-based method of acceleration of dense plasma, particularly applied for compression and ignition of a fusion target in ICF research, is ablative acceleration (AA) employing the “rocket effect ”. However, the energetic efficiency of acceleration in the AA scheme is relatively small (≤10%), so significant efforts have been made to find more efficient schemes. Very recently, a novel highly efficient scheme of laser acceleration of dense matter called laser-induced cavity pressure acceleration (LICPA) has been proposed¹. In the LICPA accelerator, a projectile placed in a cavity is irradiated by a laser beam introduced into the cavity through a hole and accelerated along a guiding channel by the thermal pressure created in the cavity by the laser-produced plasma or by the photon pressure of the ultraintense laser radiation trapped in the cavity.