Effects of target charging and ion emission on the energy spectrum of emitted electrons

We present numerical simulations of the energy spectrum of electrons escaping from a target struck by an ultra-intense laser pulse using 2D implicit hybrid particle in cell code LSP (large scale plasma) [D. R. Welch et al., Phys. Plasmas 13, 063105 (2006)] and simple 1D capacitor model. The simulated energy spectrum as recorded by an electron spectrometer is found to differ significantly from the spectrum computed within the target. Analysis of the LSP simulations suggests two major mechanisms are responsible for this phenomenon: (1) The emitted electron energy spectrum is heavily influenced by the self-consistent electric fields generated along the target surface as the electrons escape and (2) these fields are themselves substantially modified by the simultaneous departure of accelerated surface ions. For electrons with internal energy greater than 4 MeV, both models predict a good correlation between the slope temperature of the input electron spectrum and that measured in a vacuum. We discuss the application of the inversion problem of obtaining internal electron energy distributions from experimental data.