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Ion acceleration and plasma jets driven by a high intensity laser beam normally incident on thin foils

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 August 2013

Magdi Shoucri ,
Jean-Pierre Matte  and
François Vidal
Magdi Shoucri*
Affiliation:
Institut de recherche d'Hydro-Québec (IREQ), Varennes, Québec, Canada
Jean-Pierre Matte
Affiliation:
Institut national de la recherche scientifique (INRS) Centre Énergie, Matériaux et Télécommunications, Varennes, Québec, Canada
François Vidal
Affiliation:
Institut national de la recherche scientifique (INRS) Centre Énergie, Matériaux et Télécommunications, Varennes, Québec, Canada
*
Address correspondence and reprint requests to: Magdi Shoucri, Institut de recherche d'Hydro-Québec (IREQ), Varennes, Québec, J3X1S1, Canada. E-Mail: shoucri.magdi@ireq.ca
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Abstract

We study the problem of the radiation pressure acceleration of ions and the formation of plasma jets, driven by a high-intensity circularly polarized laser beam normally incident on thin plasma targets. We use an Eulerian Vlasov code to solve the one-dimensional relativistic Vlasov-Maxwell equations for both electrons and ions. We consider the case of a high density plasma with n/ncr = 100, where ncr is the critical density. Three cases are studied with different target thicknesses, to investigate the physical processes involved when decreasing the target thickness from several electron skin depths down to the order of one skin depth. The results show a more important acceleration of the ions when the thickness is decreased. Although we observe in all cases a neutral plasma jet ejected from the back of the target, the evolution of the system which leads to the formation of this neutral plasma jet is different in the three cases considered. In each case, this evolution will be studied in details. Also, a leak or ejection of electrons from the back of the target is observed in the thinnest case treated (thickness of the order of the skin depth), before the formation of the neutral plasma jet, a regime called leaky light sail radiation pressure acceleration. The absence of noise in the Eulerian Vlasov code allows an accurate representation of the phase-space structures of the distribution functions.

Keywords

Eulerian Vlasov codeIon accelerationLaser beamPlasma jets
Type
Research Article
Information
Laser and Particle Beams , Volume 31 , Issue 4 , December 2013 , pp. 613 - 625
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2013 

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