Relativistic shock waves in the laboratory

Due to the recent developments in high power lasers in the multi-petawatt domain it seems now feasible to accelerate a micro-foil to relativistic velocities. In this paper, we calculate analytically the high velocities achieved by the ponderomotive force of the irradiating laser. The accelerated foi...

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Bibliographic Details
Published inLaser and particle beams Vol. 31; no. 1; pp. 113 - 122
Main Authors Eliezer, Shalom, Martinez Val, Jose Maria, Vinikman Pinhasi, Shirly
Format Journal Article
LanguageEnglish
Published New York, USA Cambridge University Press 01.03.2013
Subjects
Ablation
Collisions
Density
Energy
Flow velocity
Fluid dynamics
Foils
High power lasers
Hydrodynamics
Lasers
Mathematical analysis
Particle physics
Ponderomotive forces
Radiation
Relativistic effects
Relativistic velocity
Shock waves
Thermodynamics
Velocity
Wave velocity
X-rays
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Summary:Due to the recent developments in high power lasers in the multi-petawatt domain it seems now feasible to accelerate a micro-foil to relativistic velocities. In this paper, we calculate analytically the high velocities achieved by the ponderomotive force of the irradiating laser. The accelerated foil collides with a second foil resulting in the creation of the relativistic shock waves. The density, pressure, temperature, and shock wave velocities are calculated within the context of relativistic fluid dynamics. The calculated thermodynamic parameters that are achieved in these collisions are enormous.
Bibliography:ObjectType-Article-2
SourceType-Scholarly Journals-1
ObjectType-Feature-1
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ISSN:0263-0346
1469-803X
DOI:10.1017/S0263034612000912