Laser plasma acceleration [1] provides several advantages compared to conventional radio-frequency accelerators for electron source injectors: high accelerating gradients up to hundreds of gigavolts per meter (compactness) and short duration electron beams. However, the control of quality and stability of the produced electron bunches remain a challenge.
Here we focus on the target design...
University-level introductory plasma physics courses typically address the theoretical modeling of plasmas with modules devoted to several different topics (e.g. charged particles’ orbits in an electromagnetic field, multi-fluid and magnetohydrodynamic models) but do not necessarily include a computational plasma module. However, computational tools can be valuable to teach both basic and...
High-energy photon emission can occur during the interaction of ultra-intense ($>10^{18}$ W/cm$^2$) lasers with plasma obtained from the ionization of a suitable target. This emission of electromagnetic radiation follows the generation of relativistic electrons during the interaction itself. Indeed, relativistic electrons can produce high-energy photons (keV-MeV energy range) thanks mainly to...
Strong-field QED (SFQED) effects are central in determining the dynamics of particles and plasma in extreme electromagnetic fields such as those generated with multipetawatt lasers or present in the vicinity of compact astrophysical objects. SFQEDtoolkit is a fully open source library designed to allow for a straightforward implementation of SFQED effects in existing particle-in-cell (PIC) and...
We report on six dipolarization fronts (DFs) embedded in fast earthward flows detected by the Magnetospheric Multiscale mission during a substorm event on 23 July 2017. We analyzed Ohm’s law for each event and found that ions are mostly decoupled from the magnetic field by Hall fields. However, the electron pressure gradient term is also contributing to the ion decoupling and likely...
Extreme-ultraviolet pulses can propagate through ionized solid-density targets, unlike optical pulses, and thus have the potential to probe the interior of such plasmas on an attosecond time-scale. We present a synthetic diagnostic method for solid-density laser-generated plasmas based on the dispersion of an extreme-ultraviolet attosecond probe pulse, in a pump--probe scheme.
In our...
We will show how a multilayer target behaves under ultra high intensity laser irradiation, based on a SMILEI simulation study. We observe density oscillation, a dynamic, that has not been mentioned in plasma physics yet. It describes how neighboring layers repeatedly compress each other, causing the ion and electron density of each layer to oscillate over time. Based on that, we will show how...
At the interaction of an ultra-high intensity laser pulse (I ≥ 1018W/cm2) with a plasma, the plasma constituents will absorb a significant part of the laser energy and will be accelerated up to relativistic velocities for electrons. The most predominant mechanisms of energy transfer from the laser pulse to the plasma constituents are collisionless in this regime, being done by collective...
