Absorption of ultrashort intense lasers in laser–solid interactions**Project supported by the National Basic Research Program of China (Grant No. 2013CBA01504) and the National Natural Science Foundation of China (Grant Nos. 11421064, 11129503, 11374209, and 11374210).

Abstract

With the advent of ultrashort high intensity laser pulses, laser absorption during the laser–solid interactions has received significant attention over the last two decades since it is related to a variety of applications of high intensity lasers, including the hot electron production for fast ignition of fusion targets, table-top bright X-ray and gamma-ray sources, ion acceleration, compact neutron sources, and generally the creation of high energy density matters. Normally, some absorption mechanisms found for nanosecond long laser pulses also appear for ultrashort laser pulses. The peculiar aspects with ultrashort laser pulses are that their absorption depends significantly on the preplasma condition and the initial target structures. Meanwhile, relativistic nonlinearity and ponderomotive force associated with the laser pulses lead to new mechanisms or phenomena, which are usually not found with nanosecond long pulses. In this paper, we present an overview of the recent progress on the major absorption mechanisms in intense laser–solid interactions, where emphasis is paid to our related theory and simulation studies.