Effect of non-local transport of hot electrons on the laser-target ablation

Abstract

The non-local heat transport of hot electrons during high-intensity laser interaction with plasmas can preheat the fuel and limit the heat flow in inertial confinement fusion. It increases the entropy of the fuel and decreases the final compression. In this paper, the non-local electron transport model that is based on the improved Schurtz–Nicolaï–Busquet (SNB) algorithm has been embedded into the radiation hydrodynamic code and is benchmarked with two classical non-local transport cases. Then, we studied a 2ω laser ablating a CH target by using the non-local module. It is found that the non-local effect becomes significant when the laser intensity is above 1×1014W/cm2. The mass ablation rate from the SNB model is increased compared to that of the flux-limited model due to the lower coronal plasma temperature. This non-local model has a better agreement with the experimental results compared to that of the flux-limited model. The non-local transport is strongly dependent on the laser frequency, and the thresholds that the non-local transport should be considered are obtained for lasers of different frequencies. The appropriate flux-limiters that should be employed in the flux-limited model for different lasers are also presented. The results here should have a good reference for the laser-target ablation applications.