Fokker-Planck simulations of short-pulse-laser–solid experiments

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Abstract
This paper describes simulations of short-pulse-laser–solid experiments using a one-dimensional Fokker-Planck code. Results are presented which show that the Spitzer theory of heat flow is inapplicable for these experiments. The ionization dynamics have been investigated by postprocessing using an average atom model. It is found that the dominant processes are collisional ionization and three-body recombination and that full ionization takes a signficant fraction of the rise time of the laser pulse. The collisional ionization rates obtained from a Maxwellian distribution are found to be in good agreement with those obtained from convolving the cross sections with the actual distribution.