Comment on “In-depth Plasma-Wave Heating of Dense Plasma Irradiated by Short Laser Pulses”

Journal Article · Thu Apr 14 00:00:00 EDT 2016 · Physical Review Letters

DOI:https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevLett.116.159501· OSTI ID:1367994

Kemp, A. J. ^[1]; Sentoku, Y. ^[2]

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1. Lawrence Livermore National Lab. (LLNL), Livermore, CA (United States)
2. Univ. of Nevada, Reno, NV (United States)

Sherlock et al. have reported on the heating of solid density targets by collisional damping of wakefields that are driven by relativistic electron bunches generated in relativistic laser matter interaction. Analyzing collisional particle-in-cell simulations they calculate the fast electron current j_f inside the plasma by adding contributions from electrons with energies greater than E_cut = 50 keV; time-integrating the specific resistive energy deposition η j²_f they arrive at a temperature profile and compare the result to the one 'measured' in their simulation, defined as the energy of particles with E < 30 keV; the discrepancy is due to collisional damping of wake fields (CDW). Here, we disagree with their metric of fast current, which leads to false conclusions about CDW heating being a volumetric, rather than surface effect.

• Research Organization: Lawrence Livermore National Lab. (LLNL), Livermore, CA (United States)
• Sponsoring Organization: USDOE
• Grant/Contract Number: AC52-07NA27344
• OSTI ID: 1367994
• Alternate ID(s): OSTI ID: 1247442
• Report Number(s): LLNL-JRNL-678702; PRLTAO
• Journal Information: Physical Review Letters, Vol. 116, Issue 15; ISSN 0031-9007
• Publisher: American Physical Society (APS)
• Country of Publication: United States
• Language: English

Related Subjects

70 PLASMA PHYSICS AND FUSION
42 ENGINEERING