NUMERICAL METHODS FOR LASER-PLASMA INTERACTION PHYSICS. @ USAL and CLPU from February 2020
(2 ECTS credits granted)
- Introduction
The Laser-Plasma Chair at USAL investigates Laser-Plasma Interaction (LPI) Physics related to the CLPU experimental activity. Experiments are performed at CLPU or abroad in collaboration with other internationally recognized scientific groups.
Another goal of the Laser-Plasma chair at USAL consists in forming young scientists in the field of High Power Lasers LPI and particle-radiation beams. Within this action, we present the 3rd course on laser-plasma processes dedicated to the state-of-the-art numerical methods used for relativistic LPI investigations.
- Course program
LPI processes are said to be in the relativistic regime when the laser pulse intensity times the square of the laser pulse wavelength is greater than approximatively 1018 W/cm2 x microns2. Indeed, when such a high-power laser pulse is focused on matter, some electrons can be accelerated up to several times their rest mass energy mec2. These laser-generated relativistic electron beams are useful for several applications such as inertial confinement fusion, laboratory Astrophysics, proton acceleration, nuclear activation, X-ray/Gamma photons generation, kT magnetic fields generation among others.
Due to their complexity and their non-linear behaviour, highly parallelized numerical simulations are necessary to understand LPI processes in this regime. Depending on the current computer technology, kinetic codes, namely Particle-in-Cell (PIC) or Vlasov-Fokker-Planck (VFP) codes. However, today’s computer technology still limits the use of kinetic codes to a timescale lower than approximatively one ps. On longer timescales, fully parallelized hydrodynamic or hybrid kinetic-hydrodynamic plasma codes are rather used. Finally, Monte-Carlo codes also play an important role in plasma diagnostic design and X-ray photon, electron or ion transport in matter.
This course intends to give an overview of these three main simulation tools for LPI studies with practical hands-on sessions:
- Introduction to kinetic PIC codes (10 hours)
- Introduction to hybrid hydrodynamic-VFP codes (10 hours)
- Introduction to Monte-Carlo codes (10 hours)
- Teachers
Prof. Luca Volpe. Director of the CLPU Laser-Plasma Chair @ USAL
Dr Michaël Touati. Senior scientist at the CLPU
Sophia Malko. Scientist at the CLPU
> For any additional information contact Prof. Luca Volpe lvolpe@usal.es
