Propagation of an ultra-short, intense laser in a relativistic fluid

Conference · Wed Dec 31 04:00:00 EST 1997

OSTI ID:332747

Ritchie, A B; Decker, C D ^[1]

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1. Lawrence Livermore National Lab., CA (United States)

A Maxwell-relativistic fluid model is developed to describe the propagation of an ultrashort, intense laser pulse through an underdense plasma. The model makes use of numerically stabilizing fast Fourier transform (FFT) computational methods for both the Maxwell and fluid equations, and it is benchmarked against particle-in-cell (PIC) simulations. Strong fields generated in the wake of the laser are calculated, and the authors observe coherent wake-field radiation generated at harmonics of the plasma frequency due to nonlinearities in the laser-plasma interaction. For a plasma whose density is 10% of critical, the highest members of the plasma harmonic series begin to overlap with the first laser harmonic, suggesting that widely used multiple-scales-theory, by which the laser and plasma frequencies are assumed to be separable, ceases to be a useful approximation.

• Research Organization: Sandia National Labs., Albuquerque, NM (United States)
• OSTI ID: 332747
• Report Number(s): SAND--98-1591; CONF-9709141--PROC.; ON: DE99000778
• Country of Publication: United States
• Language: English

Related Subjects

66 PHYSICS
99 GENERAL AND MISCELLANEOUS
BEAM-PLASMA SYSTEMS
ELECTROMAGNETIC FIELDS
LASER RADIATION
MATHEMATICAL MODELS
MAXWELL EQUATIONS
PLASMA DENSITY
PLASMA FLUID EQUATIONS