Mechanism of near-forward scattering driven photon acceleration in the interaction between an intense laser and under-dense plasmas

Abstract

The mechanism of photon acceleration driven by the near-forward scattering (NFS) in the interaction between an intense laser and under-dense plasmas is studied by particle-in-cell (PIC) simulation. This mechanism utilizes tunneling ionization effect to stimulate electron plasma waves when the intense laser pulse propagates in under-dense plasmas. The electron plasma density is inhomogeneous both in longitudinal and transverse direction. In the longitudinal direction, a steep ionized electron density front is generated by incident laser ionizing the helium gas. Around the ionization front, the incident laser interacts with electron plasma waves, thus generating the first kind of NFS waves. Compared with the frequency of laser, the frequency of NFS wave increases. This is the first characteristic peak in the frequency spectrum. In the transverse direction, the electron plasma waves have different phase velocities, which makes the incident laser pulse undergo NFS process and upshift its frequency. This is the second characteristic peak in the frequency spectrum. Owing to the fact that the electron density inhomogeneity is much larger than the electron density perturbation of electron plasma wave, the scattering model and dispersion relationships, which are based on perturbation theory like stimulated Raman scattering, are no longer applicable to this case. Our further study shows that the incident laser, electron density plasma waves and NFS waves still satisfy the energy conservation and momentum conservation that is, they still satisfy the three-wave coupling relationship of momentum and energy conservation under the condition of heterogeneous density, thus explaining the appearance of two characteristic peaks in the frequency spectrum and their growth in the wave-vector space. This study has significant reference to the spectrum evolution when the intense laser pulse propagates in under-dense plasma.