Review of Energetic Particle Generation and Electromagnetic Radiation from Intense Laser-Plasma Interactions at the Institute of Physics, Chinese Academy of Sciences

Abstract

This review covers recent developments in multi-hundred-TW femtosecond laser systems and progress in intense laser-plasma interactions at the Institute of Physics, Chinese Academy of Sciences. The peak power of the institute's Xtreme Light III (XL-III) laser system has been upgraded from 350 to 725 TW, and the system used to observe the lateral transport of fast electrons due to magnetic and electrostatic fields at target surfaces. The surface fields cause fast-electron beams to be emitted along the front and rear target surfaces. Confinement and guiding of fast-electron propagation is demonstrated with wire-or wedge-shaped targets. Longitudinal transport is detected by optical and ion emission. Numerical simulations show that quasi-monoenergetic ion beams can be generated by collisionless electrostatic shock acceleration and phase-stable acceleration with a circularly polarized laser field. A new mechanism for high-power THz emission with plasmas as media is proposed; it can be used to obtain a single-cycle THz emission. The conversion efficiency from laser energy to K α X-ray emission in a laser-copper target interaction is increased to 10 −4 using high-contrast laser pulses.