Light-to-Plasma Momentum Transfer

Abstract

The momentum of light in a plasma and the momentum transfer from light to plasma is calculated for a uniform plane of light incident into a uniform plasma. At low irradiance, the Minkowski and Abraham expressions for photon momentum are shown to be equivalent. We evaluate relativistic electron motion at a high irradiance for a plasma and show that most light momentum is transferred to the electrons associated with motion parallel to the light propagation at an irradiance corresponding to the reduced vector potential ao≈3.7 (reduced irradiance Iλ2≈2×1019 W cm−2 μm2). Our results show that to ensure the maximum momentum transfer from photons to electrons in motion parallel to the k-direction for fixed laser pulse energy, the laser focusing should be adjusted to achieve ao≈3.7, even if tighter focusing, and thus higher ao values, are possible.