Collective Acceleration of Ions in a Pulsed Magnetic Field of a Conical Spiral

The collective acceleration of laser plasma ions in a magnetic field generated by a powerful fast-growing current pulse in a low-inductive conical spiral is studied. The velocity of ions for a number of elements which significantly differ in atomic weight are obtained on the basis of collector measurements. The maximum velocity of both light (lithium) and heavy (lead) ions exceed the value of 108 cm/s; for ions of lead, the corresponding energy amounts to a value of ∼1 MeV. A mathematical model of ion acceleration is proposed and simulation results are compared with the experiment.