Hybrid schemes for the post-acceleration of laser generated protons

Protons generated by the irradiation of a thin metal foil by a high-intensity short-pulse laser have shown to posses interesting characteristics in terms of energy, emittance, current and pulse duration. They might therefore become in the next future a competitive source to conventional proton sources. Previous theoretical and numerical studies already demonstrated the possibility of an efficient coupling between laser-plasma acceleration of protons with traditional RF based beam-line accelerator techniques. This hybrid proton accelerator would therefore benefit from the good properties of the laser-based source and from the flexibility and know-how of beam handling as given from RF based accelerator structure. The proton beam parameters of the source have been obtained from published laser interaction experimental results and are given as input to the numerical study by conventional accelerator design tools. In this paper we discuss recent results in the optimization and design of the such hybrid schemes in the context of proton accelerators for medical treatments.