Abstract

Experimental short pulse lasers are rapidly approaching energy levels where target irradiances exceeding 10²⁰ W/cm² are routinely achievable [1,2,3]. These high intensity levels will open up a new class of solid target interaction physics where relativistic effects must be included and non-traditional absorption mechanisms become significant. However much remains to be understood of the absorption physics at lower intensities where classical absorption is dominated by collisional and resonance absorption. If attention is paid to producing clean laser pulses that do not significantly pre-pulse interact with the target, it is possible to produce plasmas of sufficiently short scale length that near-solid density interactions are observable at intensities exceeding 10¹⁸ W/cm² for 100 fs laser irradiation.

© 1997 Optical Society of America