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Anomalies in Universal Intensity Scaling in Ultrarelativistic Laser-Plasma Interactions
Laser light incident on targets at intensities such that the electron
dynamics is ultrarelativistic gives rise to a harmonic power spectrum extending
to high orders and characterized by a relatively slow decay with the harmonic
number m that follows a power law dependence, m^{-p}. Relativistic similarity
theory predicts a universal value for p = 8/3 up to some cut-off m = m*. The
results presented in this work suggest that under conditions in which plasma
effects contribute to the emission spectrum, the extent of this contribution
may invalidate the concept of universal decay. We report a decay with harmonic
number in the ultrarelativistic range characterised by an index 5/3 < p < 7/3,
significantly weaker than that predicted by the similarity model.Comment: 5 pages, 4 figure
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