Commissioning of a compact laser-based proton beam line for high intensity bunches around 10 MeV

Abstract

We report on the first results of experiments with a new laser-based proton beam line at the GSI accelerator facility in Darmstadt. It delivers high current bunches at proton energies around 9.6 MeV, containing more than ${10}^{9}$ particles in less than 10 ns and with tunable energy spread down to 2.7% ($\mathrm{\ensuremath{\Delta}}\mathrm{E}/{\mathrm{E}}_{0}$ at FWHM). A target normal sheath acceleration stage serves as a proton source and a pulsed solenoid provides for beam collimation and energy selection. Finally a synchronous radio frequency (rf) field is applied via a rf cavity for energy compression at a synchronous phase of $\ensuremath{-}90\text{ }\text{ }\mathrm{deg}$. The proton bunch is characterized at the end of the very compact beam line, only 3 m behind the laser matter interaction point, which defines the particle source.