Inverse bremsstrahlung heating rate for dense plasmas in laser fields

Abstract

We report a theoretical analysis of inverse bremsstrahlung heating rate in the eikonal approximation. The present analysis is performed for a dense plasma using the screened electron-ion interaction potential for the ion charge state Zi = 1 and for both the weak and strong plasma screening cases. We have also compared the eikonal results with the first Born approximation (FBA) [M. Moll et al., New J. Phys. 14, 065010 (2012)] calculation. We find that the magnitudes of inverse bremsstrahlung heating rate within the eikonal approximation (EA) are larger than the FBA values in the weak screening case (κ = 0.03 a.u.) in a wide range of field strength for three different initial electron momenta (2, 3, and 4 a.u.). But for strong screening case (κ = 0.3 a.u.), the heating rates predicted by the two approximations do not differ much after reaching their maximum values. Furthermore, the individual contribution of photoemission and photoabsorption processes to heating rate is analysed for both the weak and strong screening cases. We find that the single photoemission and photoabsorption rates are the same throughout the field strength while the multiphoton absorption process dominates over the multiphoton emission process beyond the field strength ≈ 4×108 V/cm. The present study of the dependence of heating rate on the screening parameter ranging from 0.01 to 20 shows that whereas the heating rate predicted by the EA is greater than the FBA up to the screening parameter κ = 0.3 a.u., the two approximation methods yield results which are nearly identical beyond the above value.