Enhanced ion heating induced by collisional shocks generated by an ultra-short intense laser pulse interacting on a heterogeneous solid target

To achieve above keV ion temperatures, we propose a method to deposit enough energy of an ultra-short intense laser pulse into a multilayer solid target by creating an ion shock wave. In the scenario studied the bulk ions are heated efficiently when the shock wave is created inside the target and propagates through the target. To study the feasibility of this scheme a heterogeneous solid target with of CD-Al-CD multi-layer structure is studied using Particle-in-Cell (PIC) simulations. These simulations give insight into the dynamics of the shock generation by an ultra-short intense laser pulse (~100fs, 10^20W/cm2). The simulations show that shock waves are created in the interfaces of the CD-Al layer. Deuteron temperatures in the keV range are observed after the shock. Such high ion temperatures may be benefitial for neutron production via D-D fusion reactions.