Plasma emission and radiation from ultra-relativistic Brunel electrons in femtosecond laser-plasma interactions

Abstract

A highly intense femtosecond laser pulse incident on a plasma target of supercritical density, gives rise to reflected high-order harmonics of the laser frequency. The radiation model adopted here considers Brunel electrons -those reinjected into the plasma after performing a vacuum excursion-perturbed by a localized turbulent region of an electrostatic field that is generated during the interaction, and characterized by a soliton-like structure. The observed power spectrum is characterized by a power-law decay scaled as P_m ~ m^{-p}, here m denotes the harmonic order. In this work an appeal is made to a radiation mechanism from a single particle model that shows harmonic power decays described -as previously reported from particle-in-cell simulations- within the range 2/3 < p < 5/3. Plasma emission is strongest for values of the similarity parameter S=(n_e/n_c)/a_0 in the range 1 < S < 5, and where n_e and n_c are the ambient electron plasma density and the critical density, respectively, and a_0 is the normalized parameter of the electric field of the incident light. It was found that the radiation spectra obtained from the single particle model here presented is consistent with previously reported power-law 5/3 decays from particle-in-cell simulations.