3D Particle-In-Cell Simulations of Double Pulse Enhanced Target Normal Sheath Acceleration

An interesting approach to enhance proton acceleration with intense laser experiments involves irradiating a target simultaneously with two overlapping laser pulses. This phenomenon has been studied extensively with 2D PIC simulations but at present only a few 3D PIC simulations of this phenomenon have been published. We present a suite of 3D PIC simulations made with EPOCH in an effort to better understand the basic physics involved.