Tuesday, January 25, 2022 15:00 MLIT Room 310, Online seminar via Webex Iuliana-Mariana Vladisavlevici(1,2,3), Emmanuel d’Humieres(2), Daniel Vizman(1) (1) Faculty of Physics, West University of Timisoara, Bd. V. Parvan, 300023 Timisoara, Romania, (2) University of Bordeaux – CNRS – CEA, CELIA, UMR 5107, 33405 Talence, France, (3) MLIT, JINR, 141980 Dubna, Russia Optimization of laser energy absorption in near-critical density plasmas Our main goal is to describe and model the energy transfer from an ultra-high intensity laser pulse (I ≥ 1018W/cm2) to a plasma characterized by different transparency regimes of laser-plasma interaction and, using the obtained results, to optimize the ion acceleration. We proposed a theoretical model of energy transfer, assuming that most of the laser energy will be transferred to hot electrons. The model was further tested and corrected through 2D particle-in-cell (PIC) simulations performed with SMILEI (Simulating Matter Irradiated by Light at Extreme Intensities) code on the Curta Cluster from University of Bordeaux and the HybryLIT cluster from JINR. Varying the target density and thickness, optimal parameters for the maximum conversion efficiency of the laser energy to particles have been obtained for near-critical density plasma driven by a laser pulse of various intensities and pulse durations. The optimization of the target areal density for maximizing proton acceleration was obtained for laser intensity of 1022W/cm2. More information on the seminar and the link to connect via Webex are available at Indico
