Oncological hadrontherapy with laser ion accelerators

The use of an intense collimated beam of protons produced by a high-intensity laser pulse interacting with a plasma for the proton treatment of oncological diseases is discussed, The fast proton beam is,, produced at the target by direct laser acceleration. An appropriately designed double-layer target scheme is proposed in order to achieve high-quality proton beams, The generation of high quality proton beams is proved with particle in cell simulations. (C) 2002 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved.