Absorption of laser light in overdense plasmas by sheath inverse bremsstrahlung

Abstract

The original sheath inverse bremsstrahlung model [P. J. Catto and R. M. More, Phys. Fluids 20, 704 (1977)] is modified by including the v×B term in the equation of motion, as the evanescent magnetic field in an overdense plasma is greater than the corresponding electric field. It is shown that the present results are significantly different from those derived without the v×B term. The v×B term is also important in interpreting the absorption mechanism. If the v×B term were neglected, the absorption of the light would be incorrectly interpreted as an increase in the transverse components of the canonical momentum, in the case of a normally incident laser light. It is also shown that both the sheath inverse bremsstrahlung and the anomalous skin effect are limiting cases of the same collisionless absorption mechanism. Results from particle-in-cell (PIC) plasma simulations are compared with the absorption coefficient calculated from the linear theory. Finally, the effects of finite density gradients are investigated by PIC simulations.