Super-heavy ion beams with ion energies ranging from multi-GeV to multi-TeV are a fundamental research tool in nuclear physics and high-energy density physics and are currently being produced in large RF-driven accelerators. Recent advances in high-peak-power laser technology and the development of multi-PW lasers have opened the prospect of producing such beams in much less complex and smaller laser-driven accelerators. In this paper, the feasibility of producing high-energy super-heavy ion beams by a multi-PW femtosecond laser and the properties of these beams are investigated numerically using an advanced particle-in-cell code. The studies were carried out for laser pulses of intensity ∼ (0.25–3) × 1023 W/cm2 interacting with a sub-micrometre uranium target. They demonstrated that the multi-PW laser can produce high-energy (up to 300 GeV) uranium ion beams with intensities (∼1020 W/cm2) and durations (<1 ps) unattainable in conventional accelerators. The ion beam parameters can be controlled by various laser and target parameters but also by the ion beam width in the paraxial region. It was found that a paraxial ion beam with a width comparable to the laser focal spot size is a well-collimated, highly mono-charged and spatially homogeneous beam and is composed of ions with the highest energies. Improving the paraxial beam parameters is possible by reducing the target thickness and increasing the focal spot size, but primarily by increasing the laser intensity. However, increasing the intensity leads to increased radiative losses, which significantly limits the possibility of producing super-heavy ions with TeV energies.
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