Thin-foil expansion into a vacuum.
The collisionless expansion into a vacuum of a thin foil heated by an ultrashort laser pulse and adiabatically cooling down is studied with a particular emphasis on the structure of the accelerating field and on the resultant ion energy spectrum. For late times, a double layer structure at the ion front becomes the dominant feature. The dependence of the maximum ion velocity on the thin foil width is established. The effect of a two-temperature electron distribution function is discussed.
Mora
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Centre de Physique Théorique (UMR 7644 du CNRS), Ecole Polytechnique, Palaiseau 91128, France. mora@cpht.polytechnique.fr