Ionization kinetics in laser plasmas

Photon kinetics in plasmas

We present a kinetic theory of radiative processes in many-component plasmas with relativistic electrons and nonrelativistic heavy particles. Using the non-equilibrium Green’s function technique in many-particle QED, we show that the transverse field correlation functions can be naturally decomposed into sharply peaked (nonLorentzian) parts that describe resonant (propagating) photons and off-s...

Chemical Kinetics in Cold Plasmas

Fingering from Ionization Fronts in Plasmas

In this paper we describe the formation of fingers from ionization fronts for a hydrodynamic plasma model. The fingers result from a balance between the destabilizing effect of impact ionization and the stabilizing effect of electron diffusion on ionization fronts. We show that electron diffusion acts as an effective surface tension on moving fronts and estimate analytically the size of the fin...

Ionization rate coefficients in warm dense plasmas.

We recast the atomic processes in a warm, dense plasma using Fermi-Dirac statistics and compare them to the rates of the usual Maxwell-Boltzmann approach of many collisional-radiative models. Population calculations show insignificant differences to calculations assuming nondegenerate free electrons of plasmas at solid density close to local thermodynamic equilibrium, but show departures in ave...

Pressure Ionization and Line Merging in Strongly Coupled Plasmas Produced by 100-fs Laser Pulses

Timeand space-resolved extreme ultraviolet spectra of carbon plasmas, created with 100-fs laser pulses, are obtained with the novel technique of picosecond jitter-free streak-camera averaging. Spectroscopic diagnostics indicate electron densities and temperatures evolving from 1023 to 1021 cm23 and 80 to 50 eV, respectively, implying less than one particle in a Debye sphere at early times. The ...