2009/01/14 by N. Naumova, N. M. Naumova, T. Schlegel +5 · 9 citations
Engineering · Physics and Astronomy · #Laser-Matter Interactions and Applications #Laser-Plasma Interactions and Diagnostics #Laser-induced spectroscopy and plasma #physics.comp-ph #physics.plasm-ph
paper · pdf · doi:10.1103/physrevlett.102.025002
published as Phys. Rev. Lett. 102, 025002 (2009) · 4 pages
openalex publication_date 2009/01/14 · arxiv created 2009/03/22 · arxiv updated 2009/12/01 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/28
Recently achieved high intensities of short laser pulses open new prospects in their application to hole boring in inhomogeneous overdense plasmas and for ignition in precompressed DT fusion targets. A simple analytical model and numerical simulations demonstrate that pulses with intensities exceeding 10;22 W/cm;2 may penetrate deeply into the plasma as a result of efficient ponderomotive acceleration of ions in the forward direction. The penetration depth as big as hundreds of microns depends on the laser fluence, which has to exceed a few tens of GJ/cm;2. The fast ions, accelerated at the bottom of the channel with an efficiency of more than 20%, show a high directionality and may heat the precompressed target core to fusion conditions.