Study of ultraintense laser propagation in overdense plasmas for fast ignition

Relativistic laser channeling in plasmas for fast ignition.

We report an experimental observation suggesting plasma channel formation by focusing a relativistic laser pulse into a long-scale-length preformed plasma. The channel direction coincides with the laser axis. Laser light transmittance measurement indicates laser channeling into the high-density plasma with relativistic self-focusing. A three-dimensional particle-in-cell simulation reproduces th...

Study of Laser-Hole Boring into Overdense Plasmas.

Fast proton bunch generation in the interaction of ultraintense laser pulses with high-density plasmas

Energetic proton acceleration from concave targets, the fronts of which were irradiated with 40 fs laser pulses with an intensity of 10 W/cm, has been studied as a function of the depth of the concave shape. Three kinds of targets, a triangular concave target, a circular concave target and a parabolic concave target are considered. When the depth of the concave shape was varied, the peak proton...

Laser channeling in millimeter-scale underdense plasmas of fast-ignition targets.

Two dimensional particle-in-cell simulations show that laser channeling in millimeter-scale underdense plasmas is a highly nonlinear and dynamic process involving longitudinal plasma buildup, laser hosing, channel bifurcation and self-correction, and electron heating to relativistic temperatures. The channeling speed is much less than the linear group velocity of the laser. The simulations find...

Generation of overdense and high-energy electron-positron-pair plasmas by irradiation of a thin foil with two ultraintense lasers.

A scheme for enhanced quantum electrodynamics (QED) production of electron-positron-pair plasmas is proposed that uses two ultraintense lasers irradiating a thin solid foil from opposite sides. In the scheme, under a proper matching condition, in addition to the skin-depth emission of γ-ray photons and Breit-Wheeler creation of pairs on each side of the foil, a large number of high-energy elect...