Self-modulation and anomalous collective scattering of laser produced intense ion beam in plasmas

The collective interaction between intense ion beams and plasmas is studied by simulations and experiments,where an intense proton beam produced by a short pulse laser is injected into a pre-ionized gas.It is found that,depending on its current density,collective effects can significantly alter the propagated ion beam and the stopping power.The quantitative agreement that is found between theories and experiments constitutes the first validation of the collective interaction theory.The effects in the interaction between intense ion beams and background gas plasmas are of importance for the design of laser fusion reactors as well as for beam physics.

Nonlinear ionization dynamics of hot dense plasma observed in a laser-plasma amplifier

Understanding the behaviour of matter under conditions of extreme temperature,pressure,density and electromagnetic fields has profound effects on our understanding of cosmologic objects and the formation of the universe.Lacking direct access to such objects,our interpretation of observed data mainly relies on theoretical models.However,such models,which need to encompass nuclear physics,atomic physics and plasma physics over a huge dynamic range in the dimensions of energy and time,can only provide reliable information if we can benchmark them to experiments under well-defined laboratory conditions.Due to the plethora of effects occurring in this kind of highly excited matter,characterizing isolated dynamics or obtaining direct insight remains challenging.High-density plasmas are turbulent and opaque for radiation below the plasma frequency and allow only near-surface insight into ionization processes with visible wavelengths.Here,the output of a high-harmonic seeded laser-plasma amplifier using eightfold ionized krypton as the gain medium operating at a 32.8 nm wavelength is ptychographically imaged.A complexvalued wavefront is observed in the extreme ultraviolet(XUV)beam with high resolution.Ab initio spatio-temporal Maxwell–Bloch simulations show excellent agreement with the experimental observations,revealing overionization of krypton in the plasma channel due to nonlinear laser-plasma interactions,successfully validating this four-dimensional multiscale model.This constitutes the first experimental observation of the laser ion abundance reshaping a laserplasma amplifier.The presented approach shows the possibility of directly modelling light-plasma interactions in extreme conditions,such as those present during the early times of the universe,with direct experimental verification.

Analysis of microscopic properties of radiative shock experiments performed at the Orion laser facility

In this work we have conducted a study on the radiative and spectroscopic properties of the radiative precursor and the post-shock region from experiments with radiative shocks in xenon performed at the Orion laser facility. The study is based on post-processing of radiation-hydrodynamics simulations of the experiment. In particular, we have analyzed the thermodynamic regime of the plasma, the charge state distributions, the monochromatic opacities and emissivities, and the specific intensities for plasma conditions of both regions. The study of the intensities is a useful tool to estimate ranges of electron temperatures present in the xenon plasma in these experiments and the analysis performed of the microscopic properties commented above helps to better understand the intensity spectra. Finally, a theoretical analysis of the possibility of the onset of isobaric thermal instabilities in the post-shock has been made, concluding that the instabilities obtained in the radiative-hydrodynamic simulations could be thermal ones due to strong radiative cooling.

Parametrization of Mean Radiative Properties of Optically Thin Steady-State Plasmas and Applications

Plasma radiative properties play a pivotal role both in nuclear fusion and astrophysics.They are essential to analyze and explain experiments or observations and also in radiative-hydrodynamics simulations.Their computation requires the generation of large atomic databases and the calculation,by solving a set of rate equations,of a huge number of atomic level populations in wide ranges of plasma conditions.These facts make that,for example,radiative-hydrodynamics in-line simulations be almost infeasible.This has lead to develop analytical expressions based on the parametrization of radiative properties.However,most of them are accurate only for coronal or local thermodynamic equilibrium.In this work we present a code for the parametrization of plasma radiative properties of mono-component plasmas,in terms of plasma density and temperature,such as radiative power loss,the Planck and Rosseland mean opacities and the average ionization,which is valid for steady-state optically thin plasmas in wide ranges of plasma densities and temperatures.Furthermore,we also present some applications of this parametrization such as the analysis of the optical depth and radiative character of plasmas,the use to perform diagnostics of the electron temperature,the determination of mean radiative properties for multicomponent plasmas and the analysis of radiative cooling instabilities in some kind of experiments on high-energy density laboratory astrophysics.Finally,to ease the use of the code for the parametrization,this one has been integrated in a user interface and brief comments about it are presented.