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  • Letter
  • Open Access

Laser-driven time-limited light-sail acceleration of protons for tumor radiotherapy

Y. F. Li1,*, X. F. Shen2,*, Y. L. Yao1, S. Z. Wu3, A. Pukhov2, and B. Qiao1,4,5,†

  • 1Center for Applied Physics and Technology, HEDPS and SKLNP, School of Physics, Peking University, Beijing 100871, China
  • 2Institut für Theoretische Physik I, Heinrich-Heine-Universität Düsseldorf, 40225 Düsseldorf, Germany
  • 3Center for Advanced Material Diagnostic Technology, Shenzhen Technology University, Shenzhen 518118, China
  • 4Collaborative Innovation Center of IFSA (CICIFSA), Shanghai Jiao Tong University, Shanghai 200240, China
  • 5Frontiers Science Center for Nano-optoelectronic, Peking University, Beijing 100094, China

  • *These authors contributed equally to this work.
  • †Corresponding author: bqiao@pku.edu.cn
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Phys. Rev. Research 5, L012038 – Published 20 March, 2023

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevResearch.5.L012038

Abstract

A laser-driven time-limited light-sail acceleration scheme for proton tumor radiotherapy is proposed, where a whole spread-out Bragg peak (SOBP) dose delivery to the tumor region can be achieved with a single laser shot. By using a proper match of laser and ultrathin foil target parameters, proton light-sail acceleration terminates immaturely before the transverse instability grows up, resulting in the production of a proton beam with the required highly peaked energy spectrum and sufficiently large particle number. A self-consistent combination of three-dimensional particle-in-cell simulations and geant4 microdosimetry simulations in a water phantom model demonstrates that our scheme is able to deliver a single-shot SOBP dose up to 1.76 Gy to cubic-centimeter-scale volumes on a nanosecond timescale for shallow-seated tumors and around 0.56 Gy for deep-seated tumors, where the deviations of dose equivalent in the flat SOBP region are both within the clinically acceptable range.

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Phys. Rev. Research 5, L012038– Published 20 March, 2023
  • Received 3 September 2022
  • Revised 28 December 2022
  • Accepted 24 February 2023
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