Vladimir T. Tikhonchuk

Nonlocal electron transport in laser heated plasmas

Nonlocal theory of an electron transport in laser-produced plasmas with the large ion charge and arbitrary ratio of the characteristic spatial scale length to the electron mean free path has been developed for small potential perturbations. Closure relations have been derived from the solution to the electron Fokker–Planck equation which includes inverse bremsstrahlung heating and ponderomotive effects. All electron transport coefficients and their dependence on the laser intensity have been found. An expression for the electron heat flux includes laser field and plasma flow contributions. Identification of these different sources is necessary for the unique definition of the thermal transport coefficient which is independent of the particular application. A complete derivation of the potential part of the ponderomotive force in the presence of inverse bremsstrahlung heating has been presented.

Nonlinear field line resonances: Dispersive effects

A model is presented which describes the nonlinear interaction of dispersive shear Alfven wave (SAW) field line resonances (FLRs) and ion acoustic waves (IAWs), with applications to the Earth’s magnetosphere. Two limits are considered: In low-β plasma (β<me/mi), dispersion is dominated by electron inertia (EI), while for higher β it is dominated by the electron thermal effect. In each case, the ponderomotive force steepens the SAW in the radial direction, taken as earthward in the equatorial plane. Following the time of nonlinear steepening, the dynamics strongly depends on dispersion. In the EI case, standing SAWs excited in FLRs exhibit a parametric decay instability (PDI) into secondary SAWs and IAWs. Nonlinearity and dispersion broaden the FLR in the radial direction, leading to rapid density and parallel electric field fluctuations and scale lengths comparable to the EI length. In warm plasmas, SAWs are stable to the PDI, and in this case the FLR emits short perpendicular scale SAW-IAW solitons in th...

Electrostatic mechanism of ablation by femtosecond lasers

The mechanism of ablation of solids by intense femtosecond laser pulses is described in an explicit analytical form. It is shown that at high intensities when the ionization of the target material is complete before the end of the pulse, the ablation mechanism is the same for both metals and dielectrics. The physics of this new ablation regime involves ion acceleration in the electrostatic field caused by charge separation created by energetic electrons escaping from the target. The formulae for ablation thresholds and ablation rates for metals and dielectrics, combining the laser and target parameters, are derived and compared to experimental data. The calculated dependence of the ablation thresholds on the pulse duration is in agreement with the experimental data in a femtosecond range, and it is linked to the dependence for nanosecond pulses.

Nuclear reactions triggered by laser-accelerated high-energy ions

A technique is suggested for triggering nuclear reactions by accelerating ions with a powerful ultrashort laser pulse in a plasma. The underlying idea of the suggested compact “reactor” is utilization of high-energy ions accelerated by the charge-separation electrostatic field in the direction perpendicular to the laser beam axis in a gas-filled capillary. Accelerated ions with energies of several MeV penetrating the target from the inside surface of a channel give rise to nuclear reactions which can be used to create a compact source of fast neutrons and neutrons of intermediate energies for generating various (short-and long-lived, light and heavy) isotopes, for generating gamma radiation over a broad energy range, for making sources of light ion and induced radioactivity. The yield of the corresponding nuclear reactions as a function of the laser beam parameters has been investigated. The suggested technique for triggering nuclear reactions provides a practical tool for studies of nuclear transformation on the pico-and nanosecond scales, which cannot be achieved using other methods.

Ion Acceleration during Adiabatic Plasma Expansion: Renormalization Group Approach

The renormalization group approach is applied to derive an exact solution to self-consistent Vlasov kinetic equations for plasma particles in the quasineutral approximation. The solution obtained describes the one-dimensional adiabatic expansion into vacuum of a plasma bunch with arbitrary initial velocity distributions of the electrons and ions. The ion acceleration is investigated for both a Maxwellian two-temperature initial electron distribution and a super-Gaussian initial electron distribution.

Observation of the plasma channel dynamics and Coulomb explosion in the interaction of a high-intensity laser pulse with a He gas jet

We report the first interferometric observations of the dynamics of electron-ion cavitation of relativistically self-focused intense 4 TW, 400 fs laser pulse in a He gas jet. The electron density in a channel 1 mm long and 30 μm in diameter drops by a factor of approximately 10 from the maximum value of ∼8×1019 cm−3. A high radial velocity of the plasma expansion, ∼3.8×108 cm/s, corresponding to an ion energy of about 300 keV, is observed. The total energy of fast ions is estimated to be 6% of the laser pulse energy. The high-velocity radial plasma expulsion is explained by a charge separation due to the strong ponderomotive force. This experiment demonstrates a new possibility for direct transmission of a significant portion of the energy of a laser pulse to ions.

Theory of filamentation instability and stimulated Brillouin scattering with nonlocal hydrodynamics

A linear theory of stimulated Brillouin scattering and filamentation instabilities has been formulated using nonlocal transport equations for a laser heated plasma, resulting in a model which is fully equivalent to a linearized kinetic description. The inverse-Bremsstrahlung heating, nonlocal energy redistribution, and ponderomotive laser–plasma interactions are correctly taken into account contributing to a new generalized driving force for these instabilities. Temporal and spatial growth rates, thresholds and dominant perturbation wavelengths are obtained. This theory predicts substantial modifications of the ponderomotive results for conditions relevant to many laser plasma interaction experiments. A new nonlocal and nonlinear model of laser propagation in weakly collisional plasmas has been derived.

Shear flow vortices in magnetospheric plasmas

Theory and numerical simulations are used to investigate the nonlinear evolution of vortices generated by the Kelvin–Helmholtz (KH) instability of sheared plasma flows in the Earth’s magnetosphere. The extent of broadening of the shear flow, and the energy and enstrophy exchange between the shear flow and KH vortices, is characterized. A new stationary vortex street solution is found, and two distinct phases of the nonlinear dynamics are identified. The first involves a transient phase in which burst-like pulsations of the flow lead to a rapid dissipation of enstrophy. After the transient phase, an asymptotic state is reached that corresponds to a periodic chain of pairs of monopolar vortices. The consequences of the model results for the dynamics of field line resonances (FLRs) in the Earth’s magnetosphere are discussed, and it is shown, in particular, that broadening of the flow correlates well with observations of periodic reforming of FLR structures.

Stimulated Brillouin scattering reflectivity in the case of a spatially smoothed laser beam interacting with an inhomogeneous plasma

The stimulated Brillouin scattering (SBS) instability is investigated theoretically in the case of a spatially smoothed laser beam interacting with an inhomogeneous plasma in the regime of strong ion acoustic damping. The domain of parameters being considered corresponds to most of the present day experiments carried out with nanosecond laser pulses interacting with preformed plasmas: the characteristic length for convective amplification is assumed to be much shorter than the longitudinal correlation length of the laser field. The SBS reflectivity of one individual hot spot is analytically computed taking into account thermal noise emission and pump depletion within the hot spot. The SBS reflectivity of the whole beam is then obtained by summing up the individual hot spot reflectivities in accordance with their statistical distribution.

Stimulated Brillouin scattering in long-scale-length laser plasmas

Brillouin scattering from a preformed, inhomogeneous, expanding plasma has been investigated. Backscattered light near the incident laser wavelength (λ=1054 nm) from CH planar targets has been spectrally and temporally resolved. By varying the time delay of the interaction beam, the scattering was studied for different plasma conditions. The backscattered light is predominantly blue-shifted and appears before the peak of the laser pulse. The experimental time-integrated reflectivity of backscattered light is in the range of 1%–10% and decreases with the plasma density. The time-resolved spectra and total reflectivity were calculated using a theory of convective stimulated Brillouin scattering (SBS) in a flowing inhomogeneous plasma combined with a statistical hot spot model for the interaction beam. The plasma parameters for these calculations were provided by simulations using a two-dimensional hydrodynamic code. The calculated SBS spectra are similar to the experimental observations. The time-integrated...