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Turbulent magnetic fields abound in nature, pervading astrophysical, solar, terrestrial and laboratory plasmas. Understanding the ubiquity of magnetic turbulence and its role in the universe is an outstanding scientific challenge. Here, we report on the transition of magnetic turbulence from an initially electron-driven regime to one dominated by ion-magnetization in a laboratory plasma produced by an intense, table-top laser. Our observations at the magnetized ion scale of the saturated turbulent spectrum bear a striking resemblance with spacecraft measurements of the solar wind magnetic-field spectrum, including the emergence of a spectral kink. Despite originating from diverse energy injection sources (namely, electrons in the laboratory experiment and ion free-energy sources in the solar wind), the turbulent spectra exhibit remarkable parallels. This demonstrates the independence of turbulent spectral properties from the driving source of the turbulence and highlights the potential of small-scale, table-top laboratory experiments for investigating turbulence in astrophysical environments. Understanding the role of magnetic turbulence in the atmosphere is difficult as direct access is limited, but latest laser technology can enable such studies in the lab. Here the authors probe the evolution of such turbulence in laser-generated plasma with its implications to astrophysical environments.

Bright, energetic, and directional electron bunches are generated through efficient energy transfer of relativistic intense (~ 10 19  W/cm 2 ), 30 femtosecond, 800 nm high contrast laser pulses to grating targets (500 lines/mm and 1000 lines/mm), under surface plasmon resonance (SPR) conditions. Bi-directional relativistic electron bunches (at 40° and 150°) are observed exiting from the 500 lines/mm grating target at the SPR conditions. The surface plasmon excited grating target enhances the electron flux and temperature by factor of 6.0 and 3.6, respectively, compared to that of the plane substrate. Particle-in-Cell simulations indicate that fast electrons are emitted in different directions at different stages of the laser interaction, which are related to the resultant surface magnetic field evolution. This study suggests that the SPR mechanism can be used to generate multiple, bright, ultrafast relativistic electron bunches for a variety of applications.

The absorption of ultraintense, femtosecond laser pulses by a solid unleashes relativistic electrons, thereby creating a regime of relativistic optics. This has enabled exciting applications of relativistic particle beams and coherent X-ray radiation and fundamental leaps in high energy density science and laboratory astrophysics. Obviously, central to these possibilities lies the basic problem of understanding and if possible, manipulating laser absorption. Surprisingly, the absorption of intense light largely remains an open question, despite the extensive variations in target and laser pulse structures. Moreover, there are only few experimental measurements of laser absorption carried out under very limited parameter ranges. Here we present an extensive investigation of absorption of intense 30 femtosecond laser pulses by solid metal targets. The study, performed under varying laser intensity and contrast ratio over four orders of magnitude, reveals a significant and non-intuitive dependence on these parameters. For contrast ratio of 10 −9 and intensity of 2 × 10 19  W cm −2 , three observations are revealed: preferential acceleration of electrons along the laser axis, a ponderomotive scaling of electron temperature and red shifting of emitted second-harmonic. These point towards the role of J  ×  B absorption mechanism at relativistic intensity. The experimental results are supported by particle-in-cell simulations.

Efficient transport of fast electrons driven by intense laser solid interaction depends crucially on optimal target design. We demonstrate a hybrid target design that incorporates two important features—efficient generation of relativistic electrons and their unimpeded transport in dense media. The target was fabricated on a porous alumina base consisting of an array of sublambda cylindrical holes partially filled with Cu nanorods, such that light field propagates in the hollow channels, located ahead of the metallic fillings. The hollow array acts as an efficient source of hot electrons when driven by relativistically intense, femtosecond laser pulses and shows a 60-fold enhancement in electron flux compared to a solid target. This enhancement is ascribed to an increased penetration of laser through subwavelength pores and enhanced local electric fields. The metal doped part facilitates efficient transport of the generated electrons, due to its large background conductivity. A 4-fold enhancement in target rear side electron flux is observed compared with unfilled porous alumina.

We demonstrate an interesting modulation of fast electron temperature and yield as a function of the thickness of nanocrystalline coating on a dielectric target, in femtosecond, intense laser interaction with a solid target. We measure the fast electron energy spectrum for fused silica targets coated with ultrathin, nanocrystalline Cu films with thickness ranging from 30 to 100 nm and compare them with those from a planar, uncoated polished silica surface. The fast electron temperature exhibits an unexpected dependence on the film thickness, peaking at 30 and 45 nm and falling off for films with higher thicknesses. During these experiments, the size of the Cu nanograins was kept constant and only the film thickness was varied. We find that—in the low thickness limit—the target thickness acts as an additional length scale, independent of the surface topography, and needs to be separately optimized for maximizing the generation of fast electrons from high-intensity, ultrashort laser–matter interaction.

Hot electron generation in intense laser-matter interaction studies is a topic of great interest due in significant part to its applications in fast ignitor scheme in Inertial Confinement Fusion (ICF). We measure the hot electron energy spectrum from Ag nanoparticle coated fused silica target (100 μm thick) interacting with an intense (I∼1018W cm2), short pulse (τ∼ 30× 10-15s) laser and compare the results with those of an uncoated fused silica. Enhancement in hot electron energy and hard x-ray yield is measured as a function of thickness of Ag nano-coating, varied from tens of nm to hundreds of nm. The hot electron temperatures and integrated x-ray yield are observed to be greater for subwavelength film thicknesses for the case of a p-polarized laser. Such results indicate that metal nanoparticle layers have an important role to play in the enhancement of laser-plasma coupling efficiency for short scale-length plasmas created in femtosecond laser interactions.

We report a study on the dynamics of a near-solid density plasma using an ultraviolet (266 nm) femtosecond probe laser pulse, which can penetrate to densities of ∼ 1022 cm-3, nearly an order of magnitude higher than the critical density of the 800 nm, femtosecond pump laser. Time-resolved probe-reflectivity from the plasma shows a rapid decay (picosecond- timescale) while the time-resolved reflected probe spectra show red shifts at early temporal delays and blue shifts at longer delays. This spectral behaviour of the reflected probe can be explained by a laser-driven shock moving inward and a subsequent hydrodynamic free expansion in the outward direction.

Nanostructuring on length scales corresponding to phonon mean free paths provides control over heat flow in semiconductors and makes it possible to engineer their thermal properties. However, the influence of boundaries limits the validity of bulk models, while first principles calculations are too computationally expensive to model real devices. Here we use extreme ultraviolet beams to study phonon transport dynamics in a 3D nanostructured silicon metalattice with deep nanoscale feature size, and observe dramatically reduced thermal conductivity relative to bulk. To explain this behavior, we develop a predictive theory wherein thermal conduction separates into a geometric permeability component and an intrinsic viscous contribution, arising from a new and universal effect of nanoscale confinement on phonon flow. Using experiments and atomistic simulations, we show that our theory applies to a general set of highly-confined silicon nanosystems, from metalattices, nanomeshes, porous nanowires to nanowire networks, of great interest for next-generation energy-efficient devices.

We demonstrate pump-probe techniques, namely the Doppler spectrometry and the reflectometry in detail, which directly capture the time-resolved ultrafast evolution of high intensity femtosecond laser-driven hot, dense plasma. These techniques are capable of capturing ultrafast plasma dynamics on time scales of sub 100 femtosecond. We have shown the dynamics of high intensity femtosecond laser-driven shock like disturbance into the plasma at densities more than 10^22/cc. This can help understanding the physics related to shock ignition, supernova explosion and many other astrophysical scenarios and also can have implications in medicine and chemistry. Furthermore, we have investigated the ultrafast acoustic phenomena due to hydrodynamics inside an expanding hot, dense plasma in its transient phase by the correlated measurements of Doppler spectrometry and reflectometry.

The basic understanding of high-intensity femtosecond laser absorption in a solid is crucial for high-energy-density science. This multidimensional problem has many variables like laser parameters, solid target material, and geometry of the excitation. This is important for a basic understanding of intense laser-matter interaction as well for applications such as `plasma mirror'. Here, we have experimentally observed high-intensity, high-contrast femtosecond laser absorption by an optically polished fused silica target at near-relativistic laser intensities (\\(\\)10\\(^18\\) W/cm\\(^2\\)). The laser absorption as a function of angle of incidence and incident energy is investigated for both \\(p\\)- and \\(s\\)-polarized pulses in detail, providing a strong indication of the presence of collisionless processes. At an optimum angle of incidence, almost as large as 80% of the laser (\\(p\\)-polarized) energy gets absorbed in the target. Such a high percentage of absorption at near-relativistic intensities has not been observed before. At smaller angles of incidence the high reflectivity (e.g. about 60 - 70% at 30\\(^\\) incidence) indicate that, this study is fundamentally relevant for plasma mirrors at near-relativistic intensities.