Particle-in-cell simulations of hot electron generation with high intensity IR laser in shock ignition regime

Experiments conducted on OMEGA EP laser facility with high-intensity, multi-kJ IR laser (5×10¹⁵W/cm², 2.5kJ, 100 ps) have shown strongly directional hot electrons with moderate temperature (90 keV), which is favorable for electron assisted shock ignition. We performed 2-dimensional particle-in-cell (PIC) simulations using the OSIRIS code to study the hot electron generation by laser plasma instabilities(LPI) in the experiments. We aimed at investigating the hot electron energy fraction, temperature and angular distribution and the corresponding LPIs contribution. The simulation results show SRS is the dominant LPI. The hot electrons generated by SRS are directional with a half angle of 23 degree, and the temperature of the hot electrons is 81 keV, which agrees very well with the experiments. More details of the simulation results will be presented in the meeting. The research used resources of the National Energy Research Scientific Computing Center.

This work was supported by the Air Force Office of Scientific Research under Award Number FA FA9550-14-1-0282; by DOE under Grant No. DE-SC0014666, DE-NA0002730.