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Updated: Aug 17, 2026

Investigation of Early Plasma Evolution Induced by Ultrashort Laser Pulses
Published on: July 2, 2012
Laser acceleration of ion bunches at the front surface of overdense plasmas
Andrea Macchi1, Federica Cattani, Tatiana V Liseykina
1Istituto Nazionale per la Fisica della Materia and POLYLAB, Dipartimento di Fisica E. Fermi, Università di Pisa, Largo B. Pontecorvo 3, 56127 Pisa, Italy. macchi@df.unipi.it
Abstract:
The acceleration of ions in the interaction of high intensity laser pulses with overdense plasmas is investigated with particle-in-cell simulations. For circular polarization of the laser pulses, high-density ion bunches moving into the plasma are generated at the laser-plasma interaction surface. A simple analytical model accounts for the numerical observations and provides scaling laws for the ion bunch energy and generation time as a function of pulse intensity and plasma density.
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