Strong surface magnetic field generation by relativistic short pulse laser irradiation of opaque magnetized targets
ORAL
Abstract
We demonstrate that the irradiation of a thin opaque target with an embedded seed magnetic field by a relativistically intense laser pulse can trigger the generation of an order-of-magnitude stronger magnetic field with opposite sign at the rear target surface. This magnetic field generation is a kinetic effect associated with the cyclotron rotation of laser-heated electrons transiting through the target and the compensating current of cold electrons. We present a simple predictive scaling for this phenomenon and conduct 1D and 2D particle-in-cell simulations to confirm its applicability over a wide range of conditions. For kilotesla-level seed fields, the strong seed and surface-generated magnetic fields can have a pronounced impact on application-relevant plasma dynamics, including ion acceleration from $\mu$m-thick targets.
*This research was supported by the DOE Office of Science under Grant No. DE-SC0018312. Particle-in-cell simulations were performed using EPOCH, developed under UK EPSRC Grant Nos. EP/G054940, EP/G055165, and EP/G056803. This work used HPC resources of the Texas Advanced Computing Center (TACC) and the Extreme Science and Engineering Discovery Environment (XSEDE), which is supported by National Science Foundation grant number ACI-1548562. Data collaboration was supported by the SeedMe2 project.
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