Insights of plasma formation from laser-irradiated carbon targets via ab initio calculations

Irradiating an intense short-pulse laser on carbon targets induces extreme conditions in the material and produces plasma. Understanding the physics of carbon plasma formation is essential for Inertial Confinement Fusion concepts and extensive aspects of astrophysics. However, the details of early-stage plasma formation and dynamics still need to be clarified since experimental investigation of such fast evolution (~fs) is very challenging. Here, we perform ab initio electronic structure calculations with a real-space Time-Dependent Density Functional Theory code Octopus, which enables us to investigate the different stages of the dynamic evolution of carbon plasma. Critical parameters, such as electron density, temperature, ionization, etc., are calculated by modeling the interaction between a short-pulse laser in the order of 10¹⁴ W/cm² and various carbon targets (graphene, graphite, and diamond). Given that such simulations are computationally costly, ab initio results are used as input for further kinetic and hydrodynamic calculations of the plasma evolution, and additional comparisons are carried out with WarpX, a well-developed Particle-in-Cell code for plasma modeling. This work provides a novel method to understand early-stage plasma formation and can be used to identify the impact of the atomic configuration on the laser-carbon interaction.