Transition from wakefield generation to soliton formation

Abstract

It is well known that when a short laser pulse propagates in an underdense plasma, it induces longitudinal plasma oscillations at the plasma frequency after the pulse, typically referred to as the 'wakefield'. However, for plasma densities approaching the critical density wakefield generation is suppressed, and instead the EM-pulse undergoes nonlinear self-modulation. In this article we have studied the transition from the wakefield generation to formation of quasi-solitons as the plasma density is increased. For this purpose we have applied a one dimensional (1D) relativistic cold fluid model, which has also been compared with particle-in-cell simulations. A key result is that the energy loss of the EM-pulse due to wakefield generation has its maximum for a plasma density of the order 10 percent of the critical density, but that wakefield generation is sharply suppressed when the density is increased further.

7 Pages, 7 Figures

References in corpus (4)

• Control of laser wake field acceleration by plasma density profile
• Relativistic breather-like solitary waves with linear polarization in cold plasmas
• Relativistic solitary waves modulating long laser pulses in plasmas
• Modelling relativistic solitary wave interactions in over-dense plasmas: a perturbed nonlinear Schröndinger equation framework

Cited by in corpus (6)

• Stimulated scattering instability in a relativistic plasma
• Generation of wakefields and electromagnetic solitons in relativistic degenerate plasmas
• Modulation of electromagnetic waves in a relativistic degenerate plasma at finite temperature
• Pattern formation and spatiotemporal chaos in relativistic degenerate plasmas
• Chaos in the dynamics of electromagnetic solitons in relativistic degenerate plasmas
• Stability and evolution of electromagnetic solitons in relativistic degenerate laser plasmas