## 1 Introduction  
Due to a range of applications spanning medical treatment [1; 2] to nuclear research [3; 4; 5; 6; 7], the generation of high-energy proton spectra is a field of increasing necessity over recent decades. Non-conventional methods of acceleration are heavily sought after in the hopes of more regularly achievable, compact, and affordable methods of key energy beam generation. For laser intensities within the range of \(10^{18}\)-\(10^{20}\) W/cm\({}^{2}\) incident on a target surface, target normal sheath acceleration (TNSA) [8] is the dominant mechanism for electron generation. Interacting with the laser, the target undergoes thermal heating and effectively instantaneous plasma ablation [9; 10]. The resulting sea of free electrons travel through the target body to the rear surface with some passing through the target's rear boundary. This results in a net imbalance of charge within the target, causing a boundary field acting to restrict the electrons to grow with each successfully expelled electron. Ultimately this process halts when the sheath field becomes large enough to restrict escape entirely, reaching electric field strengths on the order of teravolt/meter. This field is strong enough to induce ionization to latent hydrocarbon contaminants, accelerating them over a short distance to extremely high velocities. Due to the non-linearity of the electron density as they travel across the target, the electric field magnitude varies per point, thus creating a distribution of ion kinetic energies.  
Often for lesser laser intensities (10\({}^{16}\) W/cm\({}^{2}\)), similar results can be produced to those from the TNSA mechanism which is thus dubbed a \"TNSA-like\" mechanism. The functionality of this mechanism is covered in more relevant detail in Section 2. Figure 1 shows an example the energy distribution of accelerated surface contaminant hydrocarbons (primarily hydrogen ions) that were obtained from TNSA-like ion acceleration incident on a 2 mm thickness copper target, with a laser intensity 2.2 \(\times\) 10\({}^{16}\) W/cm\({}^{2}\) detected via Faraday cups. As can be seen, the number of ions decreases exponentially with increasing energy values, tending towards the signal noise threshold.  
Analysis of TNSA and TNSA-like spectral data is a field of booming popularity over the past few years, and subsequently the need for adequate and timely processing of such vast quantities of data is the limiting factor of our advancement. Until recently, for low repetition rate systems, identification of the maximum proton energy within the spectrum could feasibly be done by eye, however newer studies require an automatic process without sacrificing reliability. This requirement of online processing stems from the availability of new cutting-edge laser systems operating at PW-class peak power and 1-10 Hz repetition rate, as well as sub-TW class peak power at 1 kHz [11]. This allows for the gathering of a substantial number of datasets, necessitating the need for an online identification system over the time-consuming method of manual identification.  
This paper details the functionality and creation of a program that was designed to detect the maximum proton energy of laser-accelerated ion beams to as high an accuracy as feasibly achievable from the noise background. Development of the code maintained a focus on obtaining an adequate processing time without a compromise of accuracy. The code is freely available upon request to the author. The obtaining of the experimental data is also detailed below.