Radiation pressure acceleration of high-quality ion beams using ultrashort laser pulses

The generation of compact, high-energy ion beams is one of the most promising applications of intense laser-matter interactions, but the control of the beam spectral quality remains an outstanding challenge. We show that in radiation pressure acceleration of a thin solid target the onset of electron heating is determined by the growth of the Rayleigh-Taylor-like instability at the front surface and must be controlled to produce ion beams with high spectral quality in the light sail regime. The growth rate of the instability imposes an upper limit on the laser pulse duration and intensity to achieve high spectral beam quality and we demonstrate that under this optimal regime, the maximum peak ion beam energy per nucleon is independent of target density, composition, and laser energy (transverse spot size). Our predictions are validated by two- and three-dimensional particle-in-cell simulations, which indicate that for recent and upcoming experimental facilities using ultrashort (≲25 fs) laser pulses it is possible to produce 100-300 MeV proton beams with ≈30% energy spread and high laser-to-proton energy conversion efficiency.