Laser plasma interaction physics on the LIL facility

Laser physics and laser-tissue interaction.

Within the last few years, lasers have gained increasing use in the management of cardiovascular disease, and laser angioplasty has become a widely performed procedure. For this reason, a basic knowledge of lasers and their applications is essential to vascular surgeons, cardiologists, and interventional radiologists. To elucidate some fundamental concepts regarding laser physics, we describe h...

Relativistic Plasma Physics at the National Ignition Facility

Laser-produced plasma-wall interaction

Jets of laser–generated plasma represent a flexible and well-defined model environment for investigation of plasma interactions with solid surfaces (walls). The pilot experiments carried out on the iodine laser system (5–200 J, 0.44 mm, 0.25–0.3 ns, ,1 10 W/cm) at the PALS Research Centre in Prague are reported. Modification of macroscopic characteristics of the Al plasma jets produced at laser...

On the harmonic Boltzmannian waves in laser-plasma interaction

We study the permanent regimes of the reduced Vlasov–Maxwell system for laser-plasma interaction. A non-relativistic and two different relativistic models are investigated. We prove the existence of solutions where the distribution function is Boltzmannian and the electromagnetic variables are time-harmonic and circularly polarized.

Laser Shaping and Optimization of the Laser-Plasma Interaction

The physics of energy transfer between the laser and the plasma in laser wakefield accelerators is studied. We find that wake excitation by arbitrary laser shapes can be parameterized using the total pulse energy and pulse depletion length. A technique for determining laser profiles that produce the required plasma excitation is developed. We show that by properly shaping the longitudinal profi...