Generation and optimization of electron currents along the walls of a conical target for fast ignition

Samuel Micheau, A. Debayle, E. D'Humieres, J.J. Honrubia, Bin Qiao, Matthew Zepf, Marco Borghesi, Michael Geissler

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10 Citations (Scopus)
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Abstract

The interaction of an ultraintense laser pulse with a conical target is studied by means of numerical particle-in-cell simulations in the context of fast ignition. The divergence of the fast electron beam generated at the tip of the cone has been shown to be a crucial parameter for the efficient coupling of the ignition laser pulse to the precompressed fusion pellet. In this paper, we demonstrate that a focused hot electron beam is produced at the cone tip, provided that electron currents flowing along the surfaces of the cone sidewalls are efficiently generated. The influence of various interaction parameters over the formation of these wall currents is investigated. It is found that the strength of the electron flows is enhanced for high laser intensities, low density targets, and steep density gradients inside the cone. The hot electron energy distribution obeys a power law for energies of up to a few MeV, with the addition of a high-energy Maxwellian tail.
Original languageEnglish
Article number122703
Number of pages9
JournalPhysics of Plasmas
Volume17
Issue number12
Early online date03 Dec 2010
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - Dec 2010

Bibliographical note

This work was supported in the framework of the HiPER project. We are grateful for the use of computing resources provided by STFCs e-Science facility and HPC resources from GENCI-CINES (Grant No. 2010-56129).

ASJC Scopus subject areas

  • Condensed Matter Physics

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