Relativistic Coulomb explosion of a spherical microtarget

For the XCELS laser facility generating ultrashort pulses and characterized by a record power of laser radiation, the prospect for generating gigaelectronvolt particles by the Coulomb explosion of laser-irradiated spherical microtargets is discussed. The possibility of experimental implementation of the relativistic Coulomb explosion regime of large spherical targets of micron and submicron size using multilateral irradiation by several laser channels, which is not yet available for existing high-power laser systems, is theoretically justified. The proposed experiment is substantiated by the results of theoretical and analytical studies of the ion acceleration process in a relativistic Coulomb explosion of microtargets consisting either of ions of the same type or of a set of light (impurity) ions and main heavy ions. The space–time and spectral characteristics of accelerated ions with a relativistic energy and quasi-monochromatic spectrum are found. The presented study makes it possible to predetermine the characteristics of record-breaking energy ions from spherical microtargets exploding in a Coulomb manner and to provide a theoretical support for the experiment on the XCELS laser in single-beam and multi-beam regimed.