Travelling waves and light-front approach in relativistic electrodynamics

Abstract

We briefly report on a recent proposal (Fiore in J Phys A Math Theor 51:085203, 2018) for simplifying the equations of motion of charged particles in an electromagnetic (EM) field $F^{\mu \nu }$ that is the sum of a plane travelling wave $F_t^{\mu \nu }(ct-z)$ and a static part $F_s^{\mu \nu }(x,y,z)$; it adopts the light-like coordinate $\xi =ct-z$ instead of time $t$ as an independent variable. We illustrate it in a few cases of extreme acceleration, first of an isolated particle, then of electrons in a plasma in plane hydrodynamic conditions: the Lorentz-Maxwell \& continuity PDEs can be simplified or sometimes even completely reduced to a family of decoupled systems of ordinary ones; this occurs e.g. with the impact of the travelling wave on a vacuum-plasma interface (what may produce plasma waves or the slingshot effect).

Latex file, 17 pages, 6 figures. To appear in Ricerche di Matematica

References in corpus (8)

• Travelling waves and a fruitful `time' reparametrization in relativistic electrodynamics
• On the impact of short laser pulses on cold diluted plasmas
• On plane waves in diluted relativistic cold plasmas
• A "slingshot" laser-driven acceleration mechanism of plasma electrons
• On cold diluted plasmas hit by short laser pulses
• Simple model of the slingshot effect
• On very short and intense laser-plasma interactions
• On a `time' reparametrization in relativistic electrodynamics with travelling waves

Cited by in corpus (4)

• On the impact of short laser pulses on cold diluted plasmas
• Hydrodynamic impacts of short laser pulses on plasmas
• Light-front approach to relativistic electrodynamics
• Hydrodynamic regime and cold plasmas hit by short laser pulses