Speaker
Raoul Trines
Description
See the full Abstract at http://ocs.ciemat.es/EPS2018ABS/pdf/P2.2021.pdf
Particle-in-cell simulations of filamentation in laser wakefields
Eva Los1,2 , Raoul Trines2 , Luis O. Silva3 , Robert Bingham2,4
1 University of Manchester, Manchester, M13 9PL, UK
2 Central Laser Facility, STFC Rutherford Appleton Laboratory, Didcot, OX11 0QX, United
Kingdom
3 GoLP/Instituto de Plasmas e Fusão Nuclear, Instituto Superior Técnico, Universidade de
Lisboa, 1049-001 Lisbon, Portugal
4 SUPA, Department of Physics, University of Strathclyde, Glasgow, G4 0NG, United Kingdom
The laser filamentation instability is observed in plasma wakefields with sub-critical den-
sities, and in high density inertial fusion plasmas. This leads to non-uniform acceleration or
compression respectively. Here, we present simulation results on laser filamentation in plasma
wakefields. Two-dimensional simulations have been carried out using the particle-in-cell code
Osiris. The filament intensity was found to increase exponentially before saturating. The max-
imum amplitude to which the highest intensity filament grew for a specific set of parameters
was also recorded, and plotted against a corresponding parameter value. Clear, positively cor-
related linear trends were established between plasma density, transverse wavenumber k, laser
pulse amplitude and maximum filament amplitude. Plasma density and maximum filament am-
plitude also showed a positive correlation, which saturated above a certain plasma density. Pulse
duration and interaction length did not affect either filament intensity or transverse k-value in
a predictable manner. There was no discernible trend between pulse amplitude and filament
width.
