Eur. Phys. J. D (2012) 66: 328
https://doi.org/10.1140/epjd/e2012-30327-6

Regular Article

Nonlocal effects in the self-consistent nonlinear 3D propagation of an ultrastrong, femtosecond laser pulse in plasmas

¹ Institute of Physics, University of Belgrade, P.O. Box 57, 11001 Belgrade, Serbia
² Dipartimento di Scienze Fisiche, Università di Napoli “Federico II” and INFN Sezione di Napoli, Complesso Universitario di M.S. Angelo, via Cintia, 80126 Napoli, Italy
³ Scuola di Dottorato in Scienze Fisiche, Università di Napoli “Federico II” and INFN Sezione di Napoli, Complesso Universitario di M.S. Angelo, via Cintia, 80126 Napoli, Italy
⁴ Istituto Nazionale di Ottica - CNR, Pozzuoli, Italy and INFN Sezione di Napoli, Complesso Universitario di M.S. Angelo, via Cintia, 80126 Napoli, Italy
⁵ ILIL, Istituto Nazionale di Ottica - CNR, Pisa, Italy and INFN Sezione di Pisa, Pisa, Italy

^a e-mail: djovanov@ipb.ac.rs
^b e-mail: renato.fedele@na.infn.it
^c e-mail: tanjia@na.infn.it
^d e-mail: sergio.denicola@ino.it
^e e-mail: la.gizzi@ino.it

Received: 23 May 2012
Received in final form: 29 August 2012
Published online: 27 December 2012

Abstract

A theoretical investigation of the interaction of an ultra-strong and ultra-short laser pulse with unmagnetized plasma is carried out and applied to the specifications of the Ti:Sa Frascati Laser for Acceleration and Multidisciplinary Experiments (FLAME). The analysis is based on the Lorentz-Maxwell fluid model in the fully relativistic regime taking the pancake approximation. The mathematical model yields Zakharov-like equations, which gives a satisfactory description of a wide range of laser-plasma acceleration configurations. It is shown that the pancake structure is unstable in two dimensions (2D) but the collapse occurs over a distance much longer than the typical active plasma length.