Related papers: Time-resolved optical shadowgraphy of solid hydrog…
Direct studies of intense laser-solid interactions is still of great challenges, because of the many coupled physical mechanisms, such as direct laser heating, ionization dynamics, collision among charged particles, and electrostatic or…
Particle-in-Cell (PIC) method is a powerful plasma simulation tool for investigating high-intensity femtosecond laser-matter interaction. However, its simulation capability at high-density plasmas around the Fermi temperature is considered…
We use particle-in-cell (PIC) simulations and simple analytic models to investigate the laser-plasma interaction known as ponderomotive steepening. When normally incident laser light reflects at the critical surface of a plasma, the…
Three-dimensional (3D) particle-in-cell (PIC) simulations are used to investigate the interaction of ultrahigh intensity lasers ($> 10^{20}$ W/cm$^{-2}$) with matter at overcritical densities. Intense laser pulses are shown to penetrate up…
Advances in ultra-intense laser technology are enabling, for the first time, relativistic intensities at mid-infrared (mid-IR) wavelengths. Anticipating further experimental research in this domain, we present high-resolution two…
Heating and ionization are among the most fundamental processes in relativistic laser--solid interactions; however, their spatiotemporal evolution remains challenging to capture experimentally. Here we present detailed diagnosis of…
The design and analysis of high energy density (HED) laser experiments typically rely on radiation hydrodynamics simulations. However, some laser-plasma interaction regimes are not collisional and cannot be adequately modeled with…
We use particle-in-cell (PIC) simulations of a collisionless, electron-ion plasma with a decreasing background magnetic field, $B$, to study the effect of velocity-space instabilities on the viscous heating and thermal conduction of the…
We study the interaction of intense ultrashort laser pulses with cryogenic He jets using 2d/3v relativistic Particle-in-Cell simulations (XOOPIC). Of particular interest are laser intensities $(10^{15}-10^{20})$ W/cm$^2$, pulse lengths $\le…
The effect of electron temperature on the space-time evolution of nonlinear plasma oscillations in an inhomogeneous plasma is studied using a one-dimensional particle-in-cell (PIC) code. In contrast to the conventional wisdom, it is found…
We present an experimental and simulation-based investigation of the temporal evolution of light emission from a thin, laser-ionized Helium plasma source. We demonstrate an analytic model to calculate the approximate scaling of the…
Two-dimensional particle-in-cell (PIC) simulations explore the collisionless tearing instability developing in a Harris equilibrium configuration in a pair (electron-positron) plasma, with no guide field, for a range of parameters from…
We present a parametric study based on 1-D particle-in-cell (PIC) simulations conducted with the objective of understanding the interaction of intense lasers with near-critical non-uniform density gas targets. Specifically, we aim to find…
There are many interesting physical processes which involve the generation of high density plasmas in large volumes. However, when modeling these systems numerically, the large densities and volumes present a significant computational…
Room-temperature metals and semi-metals which consist of a gas of bound electrons in a near-continuum band structure can be classified as cold quantum plasmas. This insight suggests that Particle-in-Cell (PIC) simulations, traditionally…
We describe numerical simulations, using the particle-in-cell (PIC) and hybrid-PIC code Lsp [T. P. Hughes et al., Phys. Rev. ST Accel. Beams 2, 110401 (1999)], of the head-on merging of two laboratory supersonic plasma jets. The goals of…
In low-collisionality plasmas, velocity-space instabilities are a key mechanism providing an effective collisionality for the plasma. We use particle-in-cell (PIC) simulations to study the interplay between electron and ion-scale…
Particle acceleration in collisionless plasma systems is a central question in astroplasma and astroparticle physics. The structure of the acceleration regions, electron-ion energy equilibration, preacceleration of particles at shocks to…
Modern ultra-intense laser facilities can generate electromagnetic fields strong enough to accelerate particles to near-light speeds over micron-scale distances and also approach the QED critical field, resulting in highly nonlinear and…
We present 3D Particle-in-Cell (PIC) modeling of an ultra-intense laser experiment by the Extreme Light group at the Air Force Research Laboratory (AFRL) using the PIC code LSP. This is the first time PIC simulations have been performed in…