Kiel 2011 – wissenschaftliches Programm

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P: Fachverband Plasmaphysik

P 4: Dichte Plasmen / Schwerionen- und Laserplasmen

P 4.4: Vortrag

Dienstag, 29. März 2011, 11:45–12:00, HS C

Interplay between ionization, pulse propagation and particle acceleration in intense laser-matter interaction — •Tatyana Liseykina and Dieter Bauer — Universität Rostock, Institut für Physik, 18051 Rostock, Germany

One important application of intense lasers is the acceleration of particles. When intense, near infrared laser light interacts with matter, the electric field of the laser easily rips off outer electrons, and a plasma is formed. Both electrons and ions can then be accelerated up to hundreds of MeV. While laser-based particle acceleration shows an unprecedented efficiency as far as particle energy per acceleration length is concerned, the beam quality is not yet sufficient for many applications. Experimentalists in this field are guided by simulation results, mainly obtained using the PIC method. Standard PIC codes start with a preformed plasma of a certain density profile and temperature, which means that ionization, both by the electric field and by collisions, is neglected. However, as the laser field propagation is determined by the plasma density but the plasma is generated by ionization due to the laser, the charge state and density distributions have to be calculated self consistently. In fact, even the strongest present-day lasers cannot fully ionize heavier elements so that the assumption of a preformed plasma is often inadequate. In the present paper we show our recent results on the interplay between ionization, pulse propagation and particle acceleration in intense laser-matter interaction using three-dimensional, relativistic PIC simulations with ionization included.