Absorption of Intense Short Laser Pulses in Nanowire Arrays

We study the absorption of intense short laser pulses in arrays of carbon nanowires attached to solid substrates; in particular, we are interested in sub-100fs pulses with several Joules of energy, as well as multi-picosecond, multi-kiloJoule pulses. In both cases, we find that laser absorption of nanowire targets exceeds that of flat targets even if preceded by density gradients. Performing two- and three-dimensional particle-in-cell simulations, we focus on laser absorption physics, particle acceleration during the formation of nanoscale z-pinches, and on applications like the optimization of this target platform for nuclear physics experiments and compact, fast neutron sources.

This work was completed under the auspices of the U.S. Department of Energy by Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory under contract DE-AC52-07NA27344 with funding support from the Laboratory Directed Research and Development Program under tracking code 20-ERD-026, the DOE Office of Science Early Career Research Program under SCW1265-1.