  It is shown that plasma-based optics can be used to guide and focus highly
divergent laser-generated ion beams. A hollow cylinder is considered, which
initially contains a hot electron population. Plasma streaming toward the
cylinder axis maintains a focusing electrostatic field due to the positive
radial pressure gradient. The cylinder works as thick lens, whose parameters
are obtained from similarity theory for freely expanding plasma in cylindrical
geometry. Because the lens parameters are energy dependent, the lens focuses a
selected energy range of ions and works as a monochromator. Because the
focusing is due to the quasineutral part of the expanding plasma, the lens
parameters depend on the hot electron temperature $T_e$ only, and not their
density.
