Vacuum heating of solid target irradiated by femtosecond laser pulses

Abstract

The interaction of femtosecond laser pulses with solid targets was studied through experiments and particle-in-cell (PIC) simulations. It is proved that the vacuum heating and the inverse bremsstralung process are the main mechanisms of the laser pulse absorption under such conditions. The distribution of hot electrons and that of X-ray are found to have double-temperature structure, which is confirmed by PIC simulations. While the lower temperature is attributed to the resonant absorption, the higher one, however, is caused by the laser-induced electric field in the target normal direction. The time-integrated spectra of the reflected laser pulse shows that the mechanism of electron acceleration is determined by the plasma density profile.