Simulation of laser-driven plasma beat-wave propagation in collisional weakly relativistic plasmas

Department of Physics & Astrophysics, University of Delhi - Delhi, 110007, India

Received: 18 July 2016
Accepted: 26 November 2016

Abstract

The process of interaction of lasers beating in a plasma has been explored by virtue of particle-in-cell (PIC) simulations in the presence of electron-ion collisions. A plasma beat wave is resonantly excited by ponderomotive force by two relatively long laser pulses of different frequencies. The amplitude of the plasma wave become maximum, when the difference in the frequencies is equal to the plasma frequency. We propose to demonstrate the energy transfer between the laser beat wave and the plasma wave in the presence of electron-ion collision in nearly relativistic regime with 2D-PIC simulations. The relativistic effect and electron-ion collision both affect the energy transfer between the interacting waves. The finding of simulation results shows that there is a considerable decay in the plasma wave and the field energy over time in the presence of electron-ion collisions.