Proton acceleration by circularly polarized traveling electromagnetic wave

Artikel i vetenskaplig tidskrift, 2012

The acceleration of charged particles, producing collimated monoenergetic beams, over short distances holds the promise to offer new tools in medicine and diagnostics. Here, we consider a possible mechanism for accelerating protons to high energies by using a phase modulated circularly polarized electromagnetic wave propagating along a constant magnetic field. It is observed that a plane wave with dimensionless amplitude of 0.1 is capable to accelerate a 1 keV proton to 386 MeV under optimum conditions. Finally, we discuss possible limitations of the acceleration scheme.