Radiation Damping Effects on the Interaction of Ultraintense Laser Pulses with an Overdense Plasma

Abstract

A strong effect of radiation damping on the interaction of an ultraintense laser pulse with an overdense plasma slab is found and studied via a relativistic particle-in-cell simulation including ionization. Hot electrons generated by the irradiation of a laser pulse with a radiance of I lambda(2)>10(22) W microm(2)/cm(2) and duration of 20 fs can convert more than 35% of the laser energy to radiation. This incoherent x-ray emission lasts for only the pulse duration and can be intense. The radiation efficiency is shown to increase nonlinearly with laser intensity. Similar to cyclotron radiation, the radiation damping may restrain the maximal energy of relativistic electrons in ultraintense-laser-produced plasmas.

Dynamics of emitting electrons in strong laser fields

“…2(b)). The total radiated energy may be close to the particle energy for some electrons (see [16]). Specifically, this relates to a counter-streaming flow of electrons, with momentum up to 150mc propagating in the region of the laser pulse, as we observe in the simulation.…”

Charged particle dynamics in multiple colliding electromagnetic waves. Survey of random walk, Lévy flights, limit circles, attractors and structurally determinate patterns

“…to play an important role (Zel'dovich 1975;Zhidkov et al 2002;Bulanov et al 2004b;Di Piazza 2008;Harvey, Heinzl & Marklund 2011;Thomas et al 2012;Heinzl et al 2015). The radiation friction effects change drastically the laser-plasma interaction leading to fast energy losses (see Koga 2004;Koga, Esirkepov & Bulanov 2005 and to phase space contraction, as discussed in Tamburini et al (2011).…”

“…(i) a > 1, the relativistic interaction regime (Mourou et al 2006); (ii) a > ε −1/3 rad , the interaction becomes radiation dominated (Zhidkov et al 2002;Bulanov et al 2004b;Bashinov & Kim 2013); (iii) χ e 1 the quantum effects begin to manifest themselves (Di Piazza, Hatsagortsyan & Keitel 2010;Bulanov et al 2011aBulanov et al , 2015; and (iv) χ e > 1, χ γ > 1 marks the condition for the EM avalanche (Bulanov et al 2010a;Fedotov et al 2010;Nerush et al 2011;Bulanov et al 2013), which is the phenomenon of exponential growth of the number of electron-positrons and photons in the strong EM field, being able to develop. These conditions can be supplemented by αa > 1, which indicates that the number of photons emitted incoherently per laser period can be larger than unity as has been noted by Di .…”

Radiation-Reaction Trapping of Electrons in Extreme Laser Fields

“…As a result, the relativistic motion of electrons at these laser intensities is strongly modified [12,13]. It leads to much lower electron energies than the ones one would expect neglecting RR [14][15][16][17][18][19][20][21][22][23]. It has also been noticed that free electrons can be attracted to the positions of electric field peaks in the near-QED regime by creating a standing wave structure with multiple lasers [24][25][26].…”