40th International Workshop on High Energy Density Physics with Intense Ion and Laser Beams

We report on a 3D simiulation study of relativistic short laser pulses (10< a0 <120, 20-150 fs FWHM) interacting with isolated targets of micrometer size. Topic of the study is the emission of fast protons from targets representing hydrogen gas clusters or plastic spheres. Different densities from undercritical so solid conditions, show distinct acceleration mechanisms. We consider the difference between mono-species and two-species plasmas as well as linear and circular polarisation.