English (United Kingdom)

https://curated-unify.zendy.io/wp-json/zendy-region/v1/featured_content/oa?rat=en

https://curated-unify.zendy.io/wp-json/zendy-region/v1/highlighted_journal/

Global: Zendy Plus annual

Presents the access of premium content as premium feature

Premium Content

Presents the keyphrase highlighting as premium feature

Keyphrase Highlighting

Presents the summarisation as premium feature

Summarisation

Insights

Presents the pdf analysis as premium feature

PDF Analysis

Presents the zaia usage as premium feature

ZAIA

Global: Zendy Tools annual

Global: Zendy Free Plan

Global: Zendy Tools monthly

Global: Zendy Plus monthly

We study kinetic effects responsible for the transition to relativisticself-induced transparency in the interaction of a circularly-polarizedlaser-pulse with an overdense plasma and their relation to hole-boring and ionacceleration. It is demonstrated using particle-in-cell simulations and ananalysis of separatrices in single-electron phase-space, that ion motion cansuppress fast electron escape to the vacuum, which would otherwise lead totransition to the relativistic transparency regime. A simple analyticalestimate shows that for large laser pulse amplitude $a_0$ the time scale overwhich ion motion becomes important is much shorter than usually anticipated. Asa result, the threshold density above which hole-boring occurs decreases withthe charge-to-mass ratio. Moreover, the transition threshold is seen to dependon the laser temporal profile, due to the effect that the latter has onelectron heating. Finally, we report a new regime in which a transition fromrelativistic transparency to hole-boring occurs dynamically during the courseof the interaction. It is shown that, for a fixed laser intensity, this dynamictransition regime allows optimal ion acceleration in terms of both energy andenergy spread.Comment: Added new material. 15 pages, 12 figure

Kinetic and finite ion mass effects on the transition to relativistic self-induced transparency in laser-driven ion acceleration