LSP modeling of ultra-intense lasers on cone-coupled wire targets: effect of cone thickness

Experiments with ultra-intense laser pulses incident on cone-coupled wire targets can potentially yield valuable information on electron excitation and transport physics relevant to the fast ignition (FI) fusion regime. Using the PIC code LSP, we present fully kinetic simulations with fully consistent laser E \& B fields designed to model mm-scale cone-wire experiments conducted with the Titan laser at LLNL. We investigate and explain the strong experimental trend for thicker cones to produce a lower K$_\alpha$ yield. We find that the K$_\alpha$ signal does sensitively depend on the details of the hot electron transport, refluxing and interaction with the cone. Comparison to other recent works and implications for FI are also discussed.