Optimal ion acceleration from ultrathin foils irradiated by a profiled laser pulse of relativistic intensity

Recent investigations of relativistic laser plasmas have shown that the energy transfer from the laser field to the kinetic ion energy and therefore the attainable maximum energy of the ions increases when ultrathin targets are irradiated by laser pulse without prepulse. In this paper, the influence of the target thickness and laser pulse contrast on the energy of the accelerated ions has been studied theoretically as well as experimentally. An optimum target was searched if a real laser pulse with a certain prepulse irradiates the target.