title: Effects of preplasma scale length and laser intensity on the divergence of laser-generated hot electrons.
abstract: We report on a numerical study of the effects of preplasma scale length and laser intensity on the hot-electron (≥1 MeV) divergence angle using full-scale 2D3V (two dimensional in space, three dimensional in velocity) simulations including a self-consistent laser-plasma interaction and photoionization using the particle-in-cell code LSP. Our simulations show that the fast-electron divergence angle increases approximately linearly with the preplasma scale length for a fixed laser intensity. On the other hand, for a fixed preplasma scale length, the laser intensity has little effect on the divergence angle in the range between 10(18) and 10(21) W/cm(2). These findings have important implications for the interpretation of experimental results.
authors: The Ohio State University, Department of Physics, Columbus, Ohio 43210, USA.
authors: V M
authors: VM
authors: Ovchinnikov
authors: D W
authors: DW
authors: Schumacher
authors: M
authors: M
authors: McMahon
authors: E A
authors: EA
authors: Chowdhury
authors: C D
authors: CD
authors: Chen
authors: A
authors: A
authors: Morace
authors: R R
authors: RR
authors: Freeman