Laser-generated ultrashort multimegagauss magnetic pulses in plasmas

We demonstrate ultrashort (6 ps), multimegagauss (27 MG) magnetic pulses generated upon interaction of an intense laser pulse (10(16) W cm(-2), 100 fs) with a solid target. The temporal evolution of these giant fields generated near the critical layer is obtained with the highest resolution reported thus far. Particle-in-cell simulations and phenomenological modeling is used to explain the results. The first direct observations of anomalously rapid damping of plasma shielding currents produced in response to the hot electron currents penetrating the bulk plasma are presented.