An intense laser pulse can create a thin plasma surface capable of reflecting the laser field, a phenomenon commonly referred to as a 'plasma mirror.' Within this plasma, electrons are influenced by the laser field, displaying oscillatory motion. At high laser intensities, the oscillatory electron motion becomes highly nonlinear due to the relativistic effects, resulting in the generation of...
Historically, dark matter searches have primarily focused on hunting for effects from two-to-two scattering. However, given that the visible universe is primarily composed of plasmas governed by collective effects, there is great potential to explore similar effects in the dark sector. Recent semi-analytic work has shown that new areas of parameter space for dark U(1) and millicharged models...
Particle-in-cell (PIC) code SMILEI enables various approaches and options how to initialize numerical particles or track them during simulation run. These features of SMILEI were employed for several studies of laser-driven ion acceleration with the aim to study ion acceleration mechanisms or interpret experimental results. The possibility to start the simulation with particles’ positions and...
The Extreme Light Infrastructure Nuclear Physics (ELI NP) facility in Măgurele, Romania, runs the currently most powerful laser in the world, capable of delivering two 10 PW pulses each minute. It stands at the forefront of cutting-edge research in laser-driven particle acceleration and high-energy nuclear physics. We present a selected part of our simulation effort where the SMILEI...
Amongst the different features and boundaries encountered around comets, one remains of particular interest to the plasma community: the diamagnetic cavity. Crossed for the first time at 1P/Halley during the Giotto flyby in 1986 and later met more than 700 times by the ESA Rosetta spacecraft around Comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko, this region, almost free of any magnetic field, surrounds...
Electromagnetic waves emitted in the solar wind and corona during type III solar radio bursts are studied owing to data provided by PIC simulations computed using the 2D/3V version of the code SMILEI. In a 2D simulation box modeling a plasma with random density fluctuations of average level $\Delta N$ of several percent of the ambient plasma, an electron beam generates Langmuir wave turbulence...
We combine the scattered field formalism with Smilei's particle-in-cell code, using the PrescribedField block to model the relativistic dynamics of laser plasmas in complex field configurations. Despite the strong nonlinearity of the interaction, we provide theoretical justifications for the applicability of this method, supported by numerical analysis. We then apply this method to describe...
The interaction of an ultra-intense (>$10^{18}$ W/cm$^2$) laser pulse with a suitable target can result in the acceleration of particles, like protons, and the generation of secondary radiation, like high-energy photons and positrons. Concerning solid targets, the Target Normal Sheath Acceleration (TNSA) [1] is surely the most assessed configuration to accelerate the protons naturally present...
Capturing the target behavior during a high-intensity laser-solid interaction is crucial to understanding the interplay of fundamental processes such as ionization and plasma kinetics. Moreover, predicting and controlling the pre-plasma evolution produced by the laser rising edge is key for enhancing, for instance, the laser-driven ion beam quality [1]. By monitoring the dynamics of the...
We use particle-in-cell simulations performed with Smilei to investigate the autoresonant wakefield excitation. The kinetic simulation reveals significant fluid nonlinearities of the laser self-consistent evolution occur under high plasma density, invalidating the fluid model of quasi-static approximation. However, when considering low underdense plasma, a remarkable agreement emerges between...
