EFFECTS OF RADIATION DAMPING ON CHARGED PARTICLE MOTION IN THE FIELD OF A STRONG ELECTROMAGNETIC WAVE

摘要

With the advent of high power high intensity lasers it has become possible to generate focused laser intensities where electrons interacting with the laser become highly relativistic over very short time and spatial scales. An electron quivering in the electric field radiates higher order harmonics up to very high frequencies. By focusing petawatt class lasers to very small spot sizes the amount of radiation emitted by electrons can become very large. In this regime the damping of the electron motion by the emission of this radiation can become large. Even in the relatively low intensity limit, radiation damping may play an important role. In order to study this problem a code is written to solve a set of equations describing the evolution of a strong electromagnetic wave interacting with plasma. These equations have been derived and include the effect of radiation damping up to second order. These equations are numerically integrated via an adaptive Runge-Kutta scheme. The difference in the laser pulse and plasma electron dynamics will be studied with and without damping.