7,353 research outputs found
Laser-plasma interactions with a Fourier-Bessel Particle-in-Cell method
A new spectral particle-in-cell (PIC) method for plasma modeling is presented
and discussed. In the proposed scheme, the Fourier-Bessel transform is used to
translate the Maxwell equations to the quasi-cylindrical spectral domain. In
this domain, the equations are solved analytically in time, and the spatial
derivatives are approximated with high accuracy. In contrast to the
finite-difference time domain (FDTD) methods that are commonly used in PIC, the
developed method does not produce numerical dispersion, and does not involve
grid staggering for the electric and magnetic fields. These features are
especially valuable in modeling the wakefield acceleration of particles in
plasmas. The proposed algorithm is implemented in the code PLARES-PIC, and the
test simulations of laser plasma interactions are compared to the ones done
with the quasi-cylindrical FDTD PIC code CALDER-CIRC.Comment: submitted to Phys. Plasma
Observation of longitudinal and transverse self-injections in laser-plasma accelerators
Laser-plasma accelerators can produce high quality electron beams, up to
giga-electronvolts in energy, from a centimeter scale device. The properties of
the electron beams and the accelerator stability are largely determined by the
injection stage of electrons into the accelerator. The simplest mechanism of
injection is self-injection, in which the wakefield is strong enough to trap
cold plasma electrons into the laser wake. The main drawback of this method is
its lack of shot-to-shot stability. Here we present experimental and numerical
results that demonstrate the existence of two different self-injection
mechanisms. Transverse self-injection is shown to lead to low stability and
poor quality electron beams, because of a strong dependence on the intensity
profile of the laser pulse. In contrast, longitudinal injection, which is
unambiguously observed for the first time, is shown to lead to much more stable
acceleration and higher quality electron beams.Comment: 7 pages, 7 figure
Computationally efficient methods for modelling laser wakefield acceleration in the blowout regime
Electron self-injection and acceleration until dephasing in the blowout
regime is studied for a set of initial conditions typical of recent experiments
with 100 terawatt-class lasers. Two different approaches to computationally
efficient, fully explicit, three-dimensional particle-in-cell modelling are
examined. First, the Cartesian code VORPAL using a perfect-dispersion
electromagnetic solver precisely describes the laser pulse and bubble dynamics,
taking advantage of coarser resolution in the propagation direction, with a
proportionally larger time step. Using third-order splines for macroparticles
helps suppress the sampling noise while keeping the usage of computational
resources modest. The second way to reduce the simulation load is using
reduced-geometry codes. In our case, the quasi-cylindrical code CALDER-CIRC
uses decomposition of fields and currents into a set of poloidal modes, while
the macroparticles move in the Cartesian 3D space. Cylindrical symmetry of the
interaction allows using just two modes, reducing the computational load to
roughly that of a planar Cartesian simulation while preserving the 3D nature of
the interaction. This significant economy of resources allows using fine
resolution in the direction of propagation and a small time step, making
numerical dispersion vanishingly small, together with a large number of
particles per cell, enabling good particle statistics. Quantitative agreement
of the two simulations indicates that they are free of numerical artefacts.
Both approaches thus retrieve physically correct evolution of the plasma
bubble, recovering the intrinsic connection of electron self-injection to the
nonlinear optical evolution of the driver
High order resolution of the Maxwell-Fokker-Planck-Landau model intended for ICF applications
A high order, deterministic direct numerical method is proposed for the
nonrelativistic Vlasov-Maxwell system, coupled
with Fokker-Planck-Landau type operators. Such a system is devoted to the
modelling of electronic transport and energy deposition in the general frame of
Inertial Confinement Fusion applications. It describes the kinetics of plasma
physics in the nonlocal thermodynamic equilibrium regime. Strong numerical
constraints lead us to develop specific methods and approaches for validation,
that might be used in other fields where couplings between equations,
multiscale physics, and high dimensionality are involved. Parallelisation (MPI
communication standard) and fast algorithms such as the multigrid method are
employed, that make this direct approach be computationally affordable for
simulations of hundreds of picoseconds, when dealing with configurations that
present five dimensions in phase space
Ion acceleration in underdense plasmas by ultra-short laser pulses
We report on the ion acceleration mechanisms that occur during the interaction of an intense and ultrashort laser pulse ( λ > μ I 2 1018 W cm−2 m2) with an underdense helium plasma produced from an ionized gas jet target. In this
unexplored regime, where the laser pulse duration is comparable to the inverse of the electron plasma frequency ωpe, reproducible non-thermal ion bunches have been measured in the radial direction. The two He ion charge states present energy distributions with cutoff energies between 150 and 200 keV, and a striking energy gap around 50 keV appearing consistently for all the shots in a
given density range. Fully electromagnetic particle-in-cell simulations explain the experimental behaviors. The acceleration results from a combination of target normal sheath acceleration and Coulomb explosion of a filament formed around the laser pulse propagation axi
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