Abstract
The excitation of surface plasma waves (SPW) by an intense short laser pulse is a useful tool to enhance the laser absorption and the electron heating in the target. In this work, the influence of the transverse laser profile and the pulse duration used to excited SPW is investigated from Fluid and 2D Particle-in-Cell simulations. We show the existence of a lobe of surface plasma wave modes. Our results highlight surface plasma waves excitation mechanism and define the laser parameters to optimise the SPW excitation and the kinetic energy of the associated electron trapped in the wave. It opens the door to monitor the spectral mode distribution and temporal shape of the excited surface waves in the high relativistic regime. The most important result of the study is that—at least in 2D—the charge and the energy of the electron bunches depend essentially on the laser energy rather than on temporal or spatial shape of the laser pulse.
Highlights
The excitation of surface plasma waves (SPW) by an intense short laser pulse is a useful tool to enhance the laser absorption and the electron heating in the target
We present in this paper extended Fluid and 2D Particle-In-Cell (PIC) simulations of the laser–plasma interaction in conditions of SPW excitation varying the transverse laser profile and the pulse duration extending into the ultra relativistic regime
The electron acceleration can be related to the SPW field amplitude which propagates along the plasma surface and to the duration of the interaction
Summary
The excitation of surface plasma waves (SPW) by an intense short laser pulse is a useful tool to enhance the laser absorption and the electron heating in the target. SP in solids has been widely investigated in particular with long non-focused laser pulse (τ L ∼ 1ps and IL ≤ 1010 W cm−2μm2 ) excitation on grating targets[16] In such situation, it is well known that the SP resonance is very sharp and the experiment conditions for reaching phase matching in case of grating target for example are hard to fulfill. It questions the role of the spectral shape and the temporal duration of the laser in relation with the SPW excitation This is even more important since with the recent development of intense short pulse laser (≥ 1020 W cm−2μm[2] and ≤ 25 fs ) with very high contrast (∼ 1012 ), SPW in the high relativistic regime can be explored experimentally to further enhance harmonic generation[20,21,22] and the density of the energetic particles produced during the interaction
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