Stretching the Neck Towards Higher Energies

We present a new theoretical understanding of and selected results from experiments performed in 2009 at the TRIDENT laser at Los Alamos National lab. Those experiments yielded the wolrd's highest proton energies from laser-solid interaction and were based on novel flat-top copper cone targets. Simulations show that a new mechanism of laser-plasma interaction was responsible for the observed high proton energies and suggest that an optimization of the cone geometry may further enhance the achievable proton energies.