Instrumentation

Ion Bunch Energy Acoustic Tracing (I-BEAT)

We develop instrumentation for laser-driven ion bunches in close collaboration with experts in the chair for medical physics. Since several years we investigate the acoustic wave that are excited when a very short ion bunch deposits energy in water, that is we record the acoustic trace exited by indivual ion bunches. The signal shape enables the reconstruction of key parameters such as ion energy and energy spread, the most important traces of the ion acceleration process. Consequently we dubbed this method Ion-Bunch Energy Acoustic Tracing, or I-BEAT in short.

Publication: Haffa D, Yang R, Bin J, Lehrack S, Brack FE, Ding H, Englbrecht FS, Gao Y, Gebhard J, Gilljohann M, Gotzfried J, Hartmann J, Herr S, Hilz P, Kraft SD, Kreuzer C, Kroll F, Lindner FH, Metzkes-Ng J, Ostermayr TM, Ridente E, Rosch TF, Schilling G, Schlenvoigt HP, Speicher M, Taray D, Wurl M, Zeil K, Schramm U, Karsch S, Parodi K, Bolton PR, Assmann W, Schreiber J, I-BEAT: Ultrasonic method for online measurement of the energy distribution of a single ion bunch, Sci Rep 9 (2019) 6714.

Time-of-Flight Spectrometry of Laser-Accelerated Ion Bunches

One complementary approach for identifying the energy distribution is the Time-of-Flight (ToF) spectrometry of ion bunches. The method exploits the fact that protons with different kinetic energies require a different flight-time for a given distance. In collaboration with the Helmhlotz-Center Dresden-Rossendorf (HZDR) we investigate the ToF-method based on fast, thin plastic scintillator.