There is an interest in accelerating atomic nuclei to produce particle beams for medical therapy, atomic and nuclear physics, inertial confinement fusion and particle physics. Laser Ion Sources, in which ions are extracted from plasma created when a high power density laser beam pulse strikes a solid surface in a vacuum, are not in common use. However, some new developments in which heavy ions have been accelerated show that such sources have the potential to provide the beams required for high‐energy accelerator systems. ©1996 American Institute of Physics.