Smilei : A collaborative, open-source, multi-purpose particle-in-cell code for plasma simulation

Dérouillat, Julien; Beck, Arnaud; Pérez, F.; Vinci, T.; Chiaramello, M.; Grassi, Anna; Flé, M.; Bouchard, Guillaume; Plotnikov, Illya; Aunai, N.; Dargent, Jérémy; Riconda, C.; Grech, M.

doi:10.1016/j.cpc.2017.09.024

Cited by 402 publications

(307 citation statements)

References 75 publications

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“…The ion temperature is set to T i0 = 1 eV and since for these parameters the strong coupling threshold is µ tr 32 we are well into the sc-SBS regime, so that in the initial stage the thermal potential is much smaller than the ponderomotive potential and can be neglected. The SMILEI [32] code is used for the 1D3V PIC simulation. The cell size is λ 0 /256, and 50 particles per cell are used with a mass ratio of m i /m e = 1836 and Z = 1.…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

Nonlinear dynamics of laser-generated ion-plasma gratings: A unified description

Peng¹,

Riconda²,

Grech³

et al. 2019

Phys. Rev. E

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Laser-generated plasma gratings are dynamic optical elements for the manipulation of coherent light at high intensities, beyond the damage threshold of solid-stated based materials. Their formation, evolution and final collapse require a detailed understanding. In this paper, we present a model to explain the nonlinear dynamics of high amplitude plasma gratings in the spatially periodic ponderomotive potential generated by two identical counter-propagating lasers. Both, fluid and kinetic aspects of the grating dynamics are analyzed. It is shown that the adiabatic electron compression plays a crucial role as the electron pressure may reflect the ions from the grating and induce the grating to break in an X-type manner. A single parameter is found to determine the behaviour of the grating and distinguish three fundamentally different regimes for the ion dynamics: completely reflecting, partially reflecting/partially passing, and crossing. Criteria for saturation and life-time of the grating as well as the effect of finite ion temperature are presented.Introduction. Plasma optical elements are gaining increasing importance for the manipulation of coherent light from high-power lasers. This is due to the much higher fluences plasmas can support compared to solidstate optical devices. However, plasmas are dynamic entities with a finite lifetime. It is therefore important to undestand in detail the generation, transient phase and saturation mechanisms of plasma-based optical elements.Generating quasi-neutral gratings by intersecting laser pulses in under-dense plasmas or at the plasma surface has been proposed leading to many interesting applications [1-16], e.g. photonic crystals [11], polarizers & waveplates [13], holograms [10], surface plasma waves excitation [7], etc. These gratings are particularly interesting to manipulate intense lasers up to picosecond duration. Multi-dimensional PIC (particle-incell) simulations predict the existence of gratings and they have been indirectly observed in experiments of strong-coupling stimulated Brillouin scattering (sc-SBS) amplification [17][18][19][20]. However, up to now, an in-depth understanding of the growth and saturation of plasma gratings, supported by analytical model, is still lacking. While early studies identifed the important role of ion nonlinearities and X-type wavebreaking in the saturation of the ion fuctuations, simplified model equations were used and the existence of a driver was not considered [4,[21][22][23]. More recent studies have emphasized the importance of the driver on the electrons, while imposing quasi neutrality for the plasma fuctuations and ballistic ions, and including electron temperature effects in an isothermal way [2,[11][12][13]. The isothermal electron response is appropriate in the limit where the transient gratings are ion-acoustic waves that can be driven to large amplitude either resonantly [6,8,9,24,25] or nonresonantly [26,27].

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confidence: 99%

Nonlinear dynamics of laser-generated ion-plasma gratings: A unified description

Peng¹,

Riconda²,

Grech³

et al. 2019

Phys. Rev. E

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“…We have performed one-dimensional (1-D) particle-in-cell (PIC) simulations of lasersolid interactions with and without collisions enabled. We have used the Smilei PIC code (Derouillat et al 2018), which has a relativistic binary collision module (Pérez et al 2012) based on the collisional algorithm by Nanbu (1997) and Nanbu & Yonemura (1998). In the case of a collisional plasma, we have considered either a fixed degree of ionization or self-consistent modelling of the ionization process -through field ionization and collisional impact ionization.…”

Section: Simulation Designmentioning

confidence: 99%

Fast collisional electron heating and relaxation in thin foils driven by a circularly polarized ultraintense short-pulse laser

Sundström

Grémillet²,

Siminos

et al. 2020

J. Plasma Phys.

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We investigate collisionally induced energy absorption of an ultraintense and ultrashort laser pulse in a solid copper target using particle-in-cell simulations. We find that, upon irradiation by a 2 × 10 20 W cm −2 intensity, 60 fs duration, circularly polarized laser pulse, the electrons in the collisional simulation rapidly reach a well-thermalized distribution with ≈3.5 keV temperature, while in the collisionless simulation the absorption is several orders of magnitude weaker. Circular polarization inhibits the generation of suprathermal electrons, while ensuring efficient bulk heating through inverse Bremsstrahlung, a mechanism usually overlooked at relativistic laser intensity. An additional simulation, taking account of both collisional and field ionization, yields similar results: the bulk electrons are heated to ≈2.5 keV, but with a somewhat lower degree of thermalization than in the pre-set, fixed-ionization case. The collisional absorption mechanism is found to be robust against variations in the laser parameters. At fixed laser pulse energy, increasing the pulse duration rather than the intensity leads to a higher electron temperature. The creation of well-thermalized, hot and dense plasmas is attractive for warm dense matter studies. † Email address for correspondence: andsunds@chalmers.se

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“…If the intensity of the background is sufficiently high then one can approximate the trident probability by the two-step where the field is treated as locally constant at the two steps. This locally constant field (LCF) approximation greatly simplifies the calculation and also makes it possible to approximate complicated higher-order processes by a sequence of first-order processes using particle-incell codes [29][30][31][32]. However, the LCF approximation can break down at both low and high energies [33][34][35][36].…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Trident process in laser pulses

Dinu

Torgrimsson

2020

Phys. Rev. D

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We study the trident process in laser pulses. We provide exact numerical results for all contributions, including the difficult exchange term. We show that all terms are in general important for a short pulse. For a long pulse we identify a term that gives the dominant contribution even if the intensity is only moderately high, a01, which is an experimentally important regime where the standard locally-constant-field (LCF) approximation cannot be used. We show that the spectrum has a richer structure at a0 ∼ 1, compared to the LCF regime a01. We study the convergence to LCF as a0 increases and how this convergence depends on the momentum of the initial electron. We also identify the terms that dominate at high energy.

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Smilei : A collaborative, open-source, multi-purpose particle-in-cell code for plasma simulation

Cited by 402 publications

References 75 publications

Nonlinear dynamics of laser-generated ion-plasma gratings: A unified description

Nonlinear dynamics of laser-generated ion-plasma gratings: A unified description

Fast collisional electron heating and relaxation in thin foils driven by a circularly polarized ultraintense short-pulse laser

Trident process in laser pulses

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