Aachen PK 2003 – wissenschaftliches Programm

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P: Plasmaphysik

P 4: Poster I

P 4.1: Poster

Montag, 17. März 2003, 17:45–19:15, Foyer

The Relativistic Filamentation Instability of Ultra-Intense Laser Light in a Plasma — •L. J. Hill and H. C. Barr — Physics Department, University of York, Heslington, YORK YO10 5DD, England

The Relativistic Filamentation Instability (RFI) of a circularly polarized, ultra-intense laser pulse is studied in strongly relativistic regimes at densities ranging from tenuous plasma up to the relativistic critical density. A dispersion relation in the form of a 4^th order linear difference equation, fully inclusive of all electronic parametric instabilities, is derived. Instability arises from fluctuations in the relativistic mass increase and electron density. Applied to RFI, standard results are extended to strongly relativistic regimes. New higher order ‘filamentation’ processes emerge, which can exhibit growth rates comparable to the standard RFI. These processes are placed in the context of other electronic parametric instabilities such as Stimulated Raman Scattering and Stimulated Harmonic Generation. Growth rates are presented in the relativistic regime for the full range of plasma densities up to the relativistic cut-off.