Plasma mirrors “in-silico”: towards extreme intensity light sources and compact particle gas pedals
With the advent of PW-class power lasers, capable of delivering light intensities of 10^22W.cm-2 at which matter becomes plasma, Ultra-High Intensity (UHI) physics now aims to solve two major challenges: can extreme light intensities be reached, approaching the Schwinger limit (1029 W.cm-2), beyond which light self-focuses in vacuum and electron/positron pairs are produced?
Screenshot of a 3D “first principles” simulation
of relativistic electron packets / attosecond harmonic light pulses
onplasma mirrors.
Can we produce compact particle gas pedals delivering high-energy, high-charge electron beams that will be crucial in pushing back the frontiers of high-energy science? Solving these two major questions using the PW power lasers currently under construction requires a conceptual breakthrough that we propose to develop in the course of this project.
In particular, we propose to demonstrate that ‘relativistic plasma mirrors’, produced when a femtosecond (1fs=10^-15s) power laser strikes a solid target, could provide a simple and elegant approach to solving these two major challenges of UHI physics. As the laser reflects off the plasma mirror, it can generate highly charged relativistic electron packets and intense short-wavelength harmonic beams.
Could these plasma mirrors be used to focus these harmonic beams and approach the Schwinger limit? Could plasma mirrors be used as very high-charge injectors in a PW laser capable of delivering accelerating gradients of 100TV.m-1?
In the PLASM-ON-CHIP project, we propose to answer these two questions ‘in silico’, using massively parallel numerical simulations requiring the largest computers available today. To this end, we are making use of our recent numerical and optimization developments in the Particle-In-Cell (PIC) method, which for the first time enable realistic 3D simulation of high-intensity laser-mirror plasma interaction on pre-exascale machines.