Interaction of Short Petawatt Laser Pulses with Plasma
- Theory and Simulations

Laserlab Europe Workshop

Georg-Christoph-Lichtenberg-Haus, Darmstadt
October 14 - 17, 2007 -
Registered Participants Information

Title:
Last Name:	Baeva
First Name:	Teodora
E-Mail:	tbaevatp1.uni-duesseldorf.de
Affiliation for Badge:	Universität Düsseldorf
Institute:	Institute for Theoretical Physics
Address (Street):	Universitätsstr. 1, Geb. 25.32.
Postal Code, City:	40225, Düsseldorf
Country:	Germany
Phone:	+49 211 8114985
Fax:	+49 211 8115194
Author(s):	Teodora Baeva, Sergey Gordienko, Alexander Pukhov
Institute(s):	Institute for Theoretical Physics, University of Düsseldorf, Germany L.D.Landau Institute for Theoretical Physics, Moscow, Russia
Title:	ULTRA-RELATIVISTIC SPIKES AND HIGH HARMONIC GENERATION FROM OVERDENSE PLASMA
Abstract:	The most recent theoretical and experimental results on the generation of extremely high harmonics from laser-overdense plasma interaction are introduced. The main analytical results based on microscopic analysis of the plasma as well as PIC simulations are presented. The analytical theory provides an essentially new approach to relativistic matter interaction and predicts a unique property of the harmonics: universal spectrum, which includes the power-law part (with power -8/3), which rolls over into exponential decay at critical frequency proportional to the cube of the relativistic gamma-factor of the plasma surface [1,2]. The thorough microscopic analysis demonstrates that the high harmonic generation is not a surface effect, but is the result of the coherent electron motion inside the whole slab of the plasma skin layer [3]. These predictions of the relativistic spikes were confirmed recently in a spectacular experiment where over 3200 harmonics were generated for the first time of laser-matter interaction [4,5]. The fact that these harmonics were observed, although their wavelength is of the order of the inter-atomic distances is explained by the microscopic mechanism of high harmonic generation presented here [3]. 1. T. Baeva, S. Gordienko, A. Pukhov, PRE 74, 046404 (2006) 2. T. Baeva, S. Gordienko, A. Pukhov, PRE 74, 065401 (2006) 3. T. Baeva et.al., in preparation (2007) 4. B. Dromey, M. Zepf, A. Gopal et. al., Nature Physics 2, 456(2006) 5. B. Dromey, et. al., to be published, PRL (2007)