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We report the first observation of indirect resonantly enhanced transverse laser cooling of a bunched, stored ion beam of 40 keV $^{24}\mathrm{Mg}^{+}$. The longitudinal velocity distribution and the horizontal beam size of the laser-cooled $^{24}\mathrm{Mg}^{+}$ ion beam with 280 nm laser light were simultaneously observed by the use of standard fluorescence-based techniques. Keeping the operation point at (2.068, 1.105), the synchrotron tune (${\ensuremath{\nu}}_{s}$) was changed from 0.0376 to 0.1299. A strong decrease in the cooled horizontal beam size and a corresponding increase in the equilibrium cooled momentum spread were observed at the expected synchrobetatron resonance coupling condition of ${\ensuremath{\nu}}_{s}=0.068$, which is the first observation of a resonantly induced coupling for enhanced indirect transverse laser cooling of an ion beam, and is an important step towards creating a crystalline ground state of the beam.

A laser-driven repetition-rated 1.9 MeV proton beam line composed of permanent quadrupole magnets (PMQs), a radio frequency (rf) phase rotation cavity, and a tunable monochromator is developed to evaluate and to test the simulation of laser-accelerated proton beam transport through an integrated system for the first time. In addition, the proton spectral modulation and focusing behavior of the rf phase rotation cavity device is monitored with input from a PMQ triplet. In the 1.9 MeV region we observe very weak proton defocusing by the phase rotation cavity. The final transmitted bunch duration and transverse profile are well predicted by the PARMILA particle transport code. The transmitted proton beam duration of 6 ns corresponds to an energy spread near 5% for which the transport efficiency is simulated to be 10%. The predictive capability of PARMILA suggests that it can be useful in the design of future higher energy transport beam lines as part of an integrated laser-driven ion accelerator system.

The dynamics of a MeV laser-produced proton beam affected by a radio frequency (rf) electric field has been studied. The proton beam was emitted normal to the rear surface of a thin polyimide target irradiated with an ultrashort pulsed laser with a power density of $4\ifmmode\times\else\texttimes\fi{}{10}^{18}\text{ }\text{ }\mathrm{W}/{\mathrm{cm}}^{2}$. The energy spread was compressed to less than 11% at the full width at half maximum (FWHM) by an rf field. Focusing and defocusing effects of the transverse direction were also observed. These effects were analyzed and reproduced by Monte Carlo simulations. The simulation results show that the transversely focused protons had a broad continuous spectrum, while the peaks in the proton spectrum were defocused. Based on this new information, we propose that elimination of the continuous energy component of laser-produced protons is possible by utilizing a focal length difference between the continuous spectral protons and the protons included in the spectral peak.