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Mechanisms of fast electron energy deposition in dense magnetized plasma are studied by hybrid particle-in-cell/fluid simulations. It is found that the energy deposition ratio of Ohmic heating and collisional heating can be enhanced significantly as an Al target is presented in a strongly axial magnetic field, attributed to the fast electrons rotating around the axial field. The weight of Ohmic heating is increased with laser intensity during ultraintense laser-driven fast electrons propagating both in magnetized and unmagnetized solid targets, which is the dominant heating mechanism as the laser intensity is greater than 1018 W/cm2 compared to the collisional heating. The degree of the axial magnetic field effect on the fast electron energy deposition mechanisms is dependent on target materials, which is much weaker for low-Z targets, such as CH2. The results here should be helpful for the target designing of fast electron applications. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Energetic divergent proton beams can be generated in the interaction of ultra-intense laser pulses with solid-density foil targets via target normal sheath acceleration (TNSA). In this paper, a scheme using a capillary to reduce the proton beam divergence is proposed. By two-dimensional particle-in-cell (PIC) simulations, it is shown that strong transverse electric and magnetic fields rapidly grow at the inner surface of the capillary when the laser-driven hot electrons propagate through the target and into the capillary. The spontaneous magnetic field collimates the electron flow, and the ions dragged from the capillary wall by hot electrons neutralize the negative charge and thus restrain the transverse extension of the sheath field set up by electrons. The proton beam divergence, which is mainly determined by the accelerating sheath field, is therefore reduced by the transverse limitation of the sheath field in the capillary. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Generation and propagation of attosecond electron bunches along a cone-and-channel target are investigated by particle-in-cell simulation. The target electrons are pulled out by the oscillating electric field of an intense laser pulse irradiating a cone target and accelerated forward along the cone walls. It is shown that the energetic electrons can be further guided and confined by a channel attached to the cone tip. The propagation of these electrons along the channel induces a strong quasistatic magnetic field as well as a sheath electric field since a part of the energetic electrons expands into the surrounding vacuum. The electromagnetic field in turn confines the surface currents. With the cone-and-channel target the energetic electrons can be much better collimated and propagate much farther than that from the classical cone target. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Laser shaping of a relativistic circularly polarized laser pulse in ultra-intense laser thin-foil interaction is investigated by theoretical analysis and particle-in-cell simulations. It is found that the plasma foil as a nonlinear optical shutter has an obvious cut-out effect on the laser temporal and spatial profiles. Two-dimensional particle-in-cell simulations show that the high intensity part of a Gaussian laser pulse can be well extracted from the whole pulse. The transmitted pulse with longitudinal steep rise front and transverse super-Gaussian profile is thus obtained which would be beneficial for the radiation pressure acceleration regime. The Rayleigh-Taylor-like instability is observed in the simulations, which destroys the foil and results in the cut-out effect of the pulse in the rise front of a circularly polarized laser. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

It is shown that the filamentation instability of relativistically intense laser pulses in plasmas can be mitigated in the case where the laser beam has an ellipticaily distributed beam profile. A high-power elliptical Gaussian laser beam would break up into a regular filamentation pattern-in contrast to the randomly distributed filaments of a circularly distributed laser beam-and much more laser power would be concentrated in the central region. A highly ellipticaily distributed laser beam experiences anisotropic self-focusing and diffraction processes in the plasma channel ensuring that the unstable diffractive rings of the circular case cannot be produced. The azimuthal modulational instability is thereby suppressed. These findings are verified by three-dimensional particle-in-cell simulations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

An electron injection regime in laser wake-field acceleration, namely electron bow-wave injection, is investigated by two- and three-dimensional particle-in-cell simulation as well as analytical model. In this regime electrons in the intense electron bow wave behind the first bubble catch up with the bubble tail and are trapped by the bubble finally, resulting in considerable enhancement of the total trapped electron number. For example, with the increase of the laser intensity from 2 × 1019 to 1 × 1020 W/cm2, the electron trapping changes from normal self-injection to bow-wave injection and the trapped electron number is enhanced by two orders of magnitude. An analytical model is proposed to explain the numerical observation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]