Foil acceleration by pulsed ion beam ablation plasma and its applications

Abstract

The foil acceleration by ablation pressure produced by an intense, pulsed ion-beam interaction with targets has been studied. The experiments were carried out with ion beam energy densities of 100 J/cm/sup 2/ and 4.3 kJ/cm/sup 2/. The maximum foil velocity obtained by time-of-flight measurement was /spl sim/5.5 km/s, giving the estimated ablation pressure /spl sim/15 GPa.