A novel online ion spectrometer for efficient detection of laser-accelerated ions

An online ion spectrometer was developed mainly based on a Thomson parabola and plastic scintillators. The sensitivity of the spectrometer to the proton has been calibrated on an electrostatic accelerator. The diagnostics has been successfully tested in laser-driven ion acceleration experiments. The calibration data obtained from the DC accelerator are applied during the deconvolution process to obtain the ion spectrum. This online spectrometer provides us an efficient diagnostics for the ion spectra in high-repetition-rate laser acceleration experiments. ? 2011 IEEE.EI