Eur. Phys. J. D 29, 69-76 (2004)
https://doi.org/10.1140/epjd/e2004-00004-8

Hydrodynamic simulation of XUV laser-produced plasmas

¹ Centro de Física de Plasmas, Instituto Superior Técnico, 1049-001 Lisbon, Portugal
² Laboratoire d'Interaction du Rayonnement X avec la Matière, Université Paris-Sud, 91405 Orsay, France
³ Centre Lasers Intenses et Applications, UMR 5107 du CNRS, Université Bordeaux I, CEA, Université Bordeaux I, 33405 Talence, France

Corresponding author: ^a marta.fajardo@ist.utl.pt

Received: 7 October 2003
Revised: 6 December 2003
Published online: 20 January 2004

Abstract

With the construction of novel XUV sources, such as VUV FEL's, XUV laser-matter interaction will become available at ultra-high intensities. But even tabletop facilities such as XUV lasers or High Harmonic Generation, are starting to reach intensities high enough to produce dense plasmas. XUV laser-matter interaction is studied by a 1D hydrodynamic Lagrangian code with radiative transfer for a range of interesting XUV sources. Heating is found to be very different for  elements having L-edges around the XUV laser wavelength. Possible absorption mechanisms were investigated in order to explain this behaviour, and interaction with cold dense matter proved to be dominant. Plasma sensitivity to XUV laser parameters such as energy, pulse duration, and wavelength was also studied, covering ranges of existing XUV lasers. We found that XUV laser-produced plasmas could be studied using tabletop lasers, paving the way for future VUV-FEL high intensity experiments.