Experimental study of the acceleration of protons emitted from thin foils irradiated by ultrahigh-contrast laser pulses

Experimental results are presented for proton acceleration from the back of a target irradiated by laser pulses with intensities up to 2 × 10¹⁹ W/cm² generated by the SOKOL-P facility. The proton acceleration efficiency increases with decreasing of the target thickness. However, thin targets are destroyed by the amplified spontaneous emission (ASE) prepulse before the main pulse arrival. An additional optical switch based on a Pockels cell has been used in the amplification section to carry out the experiments with ultrathin foils. As a result, the energy contrast with respect to the ASE prepulse has been increased up to 4 × 10⁶. Owing to high contrast, the experiments on studying proton acceleration from foils with thicknesses less than 100 nm have been carried out.