Relativistic AC gyromagnetic effects in ultraintense laser-matter interaction

We demonstrate that in ultraintense ultrafast laser-matter interaction, the interplay of laser-induced oscillating space-charge fields with laser E and B fields can strongly affect whether the interaction is relativistic or not: stronger laser fields may not in fact produce more relativistic plasma interactions. We show that there exists a regime of interaction, in the relation of laser intensity and incident angle, for which the Brunel effect of electron acceleration is strongly suppressed by AC gyromagnetic fields, at a frequency different from the laser field. Analytically and with 1.5D particle-in-cell modeling, we show that from gyromagnetic effects, even in the absence of usual J x B second-harmonic contributions, there are strong effects on the harmonic emission and on the generation of attosecond pulses.