Skin-Depth Theory Explaining Anomalous Picosecond-Terawatt Laser Plasma Interaction II

The anomaly of ion emission at laser irradiation of targets measured by Badziak et al. was analyzed on the background of the extensive research in the past. In contrast to the irradiation with lasers of longer than 100 ps pulse duration, a drastic decrease of the maximum ion energies was measured with ps pulses. Very strange was the observation that the number of emitted fast ions was intensity independent. The usual ponderomotive or relativistic self-focusing theory and related processes could not explain the results. Instead a direct interaction within the skin depth of the irradiated target was concluded. This model confirms the plane geometry nonlinear force interaction in the ps range producing fast plasma blocks moving perpendicular off or into the target. The block moving into the target opens a new scheme of laser fusion by modifying the experiments of Norreys et al. The use of relatively low subrelativistic laser intensities for the new scheme of laser fusion is evaluated on the background of the long years studies of nonlinear force driven plasma blocks and earlier interpenetration fusion reactions for providing the parameters for expected fusion gains much higher than the experiment of Norreys et al. for a fusion power scheme.