Laser driven ion accelerating development is regarded as a compact and efficient way of plasma accelerator, suitable for cancer treatment, fusion and high energy physics and other fields.

Recently, researchers at the university of Osaka, Japan and the national institute of quantum science and technology (QST), university of kobe, Japan, and Taiwan's national central university partners, Japan kansai photon science institute (QST) J - KAREN laser (J - KAREN laser) of what they call "the world's most thin, the strongest graphene target" for high-energy ion acceleration directly.

The study, published in this week's Nature science report (Nature, Scientific Reports).

In laser ion accelerator theory, the thinner the target body, the higher the ion energy. However, the researchers say, because of the intense laser noise components will be destroyed before laser pulse peak of targets, so in a very thin target zone directly to accelerate the ions has been difficult. Therefore, it is necessary to use plasma reflector to remove noise components, so as to realize the efficient high intensity laser ion accelerated.

As a result, the researchers developed a large suspended graphene (LSG) laser ion acceleration as the goal. Graphene is considered to be one of the world's most thin, the most powerful 2 d material, suitable for laser ion source.

The study's authors, Wei - Yen Woon, commented: "thin layer of graphene atoms is transparent, conductivity and thermal conductivity is strong, light weight, is also the strongest material." "So far, graphene has a variety of applications, including transportation, medical, electronics, and energy. We have demonstrated that graphene in the field of laser ion accelerating another disruptive applications, including the unique properties of graphene played an indispensable role."

In the absence of plasma reflector, direct illuminate LSG MeV proton and carbon target, from the relativistic laser intensity to the relativistic laser intensity, from low contrast to the high contrast, clearly shows that the durability of graphene.

"The results of this study is suitable for the development for cancer treatment, laser fusion, high-energy physics and laboratory astrophysics compact and efficient laser ion accelerator driven."

"In the absence of plasma reflector, high-energy ions accelerated obviously shows the robustness of LSG directly. We will use the thin LSG atoms as the target to accelerate the other can't exist independently of the material. We also showed the theory under the strength of high energy ion acceleration. This will allow us to use relatively small laser equipment to study laser ion acceleration. Moreover, even in the target area of the thin no plasma reflector, can achieve high energy ions accelerated. This opens the new field of laser driver ion accelerating."