Related papers: Visualizing Plasmons and Ultrafast Kinetic Instabi…
Plasmas are beset with instabilities of all types, hydrodynamic, magneto-hydrodynamic, and electromagnetic. These instabilities are complex, occur over a large range of temporal and spatial scales, are most often unmanageable, and have…
Extreme states of matter exist throughout the universe e.g. inside planetary cores, stars or astrophysical jets. Such conditions are generated in the laboratory in the interaction of powerful lasers with solids, and their evolution can be…
We demonstrate the potential of X-ray free-electron lasers (XFEL) to advancethe understanding of complex plasma dynamics by allowing for the first time nanometer and femtosecond resolution at the same time in plasma diagnostics. Plasma…
Understanding the complex plasma dynamics in ultra-intense relativistic laser-solid interactions is of fundamental importance to the applications of laser plasma-based particle accelerators, creation of high energy-density matter,…
The nonlinear regime of laser-plasma interaction including both two-plasmon--decay (TPD) and stimulated Raman scattering (SRS) instabilities has been studied in three-dimensional (3-D) particle-in-cell simulations with parameters relevant…
Rayleigh-Taylor (RT) instability occurs in a variety of scenario as a consequence of fluids of different densities pushing against the density gradient. For example, it is expected to occur in the ion acceleration of solid density targets…
Liquid crystal layers sandwiched between a reference plate and a photosensitive substrate were investigated. We focused on the reverse geometry, where the cell was illuminated by a laser beam from the reference side. In planar cells…
We describe a new method for imaging ultrafast dynamics in condensed matter using inelastic x-ray scattering (IXS). We use the concepts of causality and irreversibility to construct a general solution to the inverse scattering problem (or…
A superintense laser pulse illuminating a thin solid-density foil can, in principle, accelerate the entire foil, therefore yielding dense, collimated, and quasi-monoenergetic ion beams. These unique features render radiation pressure…
In this work we analyze the longitudinal instabilities of propagating acceleration structures that are driven by a relativistically intense laser at the moving plasma critical layer [1]. These instabilities affect the energy-spectra of the…
We show that a strong infrared laser beam obliquely incident on graphene can experience a parametric instability with respect to decay into lower-frequency (idler) photons and THz surface plasmons. The instability is due to a strong…
We review studies of superintense laser interaction with solid targets where the generation of propagating surface plasmons (or surface waves) plays a key role. These studies include the onset of plasma instabilities at the irradiated…
A new evolution pattern for parametric instabilities in the non-linear stage driven by a broadband laser is studied with kinetic particle-in-cell simulations. It is found that an intermittent excitation of parametric instabilities caused by…
The complex physics of the interaction between short pulse high intensity lasers and solids is so far hardly accessible by experiments. As a result of missing experimental capabilities to probe the complex electron dynamics and competing…
In a recent one-dimensional numerical fluid simulation study [Saxena et al., Phys. Plasmas 13,032309 (2006)], it was found that an instability is associated with a special class of one-dimensional nonlinear solutions for modulated light…
An electron or electron-positron beam streaming through a plasma is notoriously prone to micro-instabilities. For a dilute ultrarelativistic infinite beam, the dominant instability is a mixed mode between longitudinal two-stream and…
We derive a theoretical model for the Rayleigh-Taylor (RT)-like instability for a thin foil accelerated by an intense laser, taking into account finite wavelength effects in the laser wave field. The latter leads to the diffraction of the…
Photoinduced ultrafast phenomena in materials exhibiting nonequilibrium behavior can lead to the emergence of exotic phases beyond the limits of thermodynamics, presenting opportunities for femtosecond photoexcitation. Despite extensive…
Cosmic ray acceleration through first-order Fermi acceleration in a collisionless plasma relies on efficient scattering off magnetic field fluctuations. Scattering is most efficient for magnetic field fluctuations with wavelengths on the…
Acceleration of ultrathin plasma foils by laser radiation pressure promises compact alternatives to the conventional ion accelerators. It was shown, that a major showstopper for such schemes is a strong transverse instability, which…