Observation of monoenergetic protons from a near-critical gas target tailored by a hydrodynamic shock

We present our recent experimental results of monoenergetic protons accelerated from the interaction of an intense terawatt CO2 laser pulse with a near-critical hydrogen gas target, with its density profile tailored by a hydrodynamic shock. A 5-ns Nd:YAG laser pulse is focused onto a piece of stainless steel foil mounted at the front edge of the gas jet nozzle orifice. The ablation launches a spherical shock into the near-critical gas column, which creates a sharp density gradient at the front edge of the target, with ~ 6X local density enhancement up to several times of critical density within ~<100 microns. With such density profile, we have obtained monoenergetic proton beams with good shot-to-shot reproducibility and energies up to 1.2 MeV.