Residual energy in plasmas produced by intense subpicosecond lasers
- 1 March 1991
- journal article
- research article
- Published by American Physical Society (APS) in Physical Review A
- Vol. 43 (6) , 3100-3113
- https://doi.org/10.1103/physreva.43.3100
Abstract
This paper presents parameter studies to find the optimum conditions for the production of a cold highly ionized plasma suitable for the generation of recombination x-ray lasers. The effect of space-charge fields on the residual electron energy of optical-field-ionized plasmas is studied using a classical theory of above-threshold ionization and particle-in-cell simulations. The dependence of the residual energy on the pump-laser wavelength and peak intensity is strongly influenced by the dependence of the quiver energy on these parameters. The effect of space-charge fields indicates that the residual energy can be minimized by a suitable matching of the laser pulse length to the plasma density. The effect of collisional heating on the residual energy is also discussed.Keywords
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