Figure 1

Experimental setup and ion spectra. (A) Experimental setup. The interaction of the 100 TW laser with the solid target (left blue) accelerates several types of ions species and generates X-rays. The ions and X-rays propagate under vacuum to the sample (orange right) to be probed, and the ion detectors. The X-rays generated by the sample are analyzed by the X-ray camera. (B) Proton energy spectra as accelerated by an Al 3 µm (blue), Cu 5 µm (red) and Au 5 µm (black) thickness targets, measured by the Thomson Parabola (TP) spectrometer equipped with a MicroChannel Plate (MCP) located at 0°. (C) Particle spectra as accelerated by a Cu 5 µm thickness target for different laser-accelerated ion species (H⁺ in red, C⁴⁺ in blue, C³⁺ in green, and C²⁺ in black as obtained by the TP spectrometer. Each spectrum is averaged over 10 shots and the uncertainties are calculated using the standard error of the mean.