Two dimensional particle-in-cell simulations are performed which show the formation of an extremely large electrostatic field near the front of a relativisitically self-focused laser pulse propagating in an underdense plasma. The size of the field is found to reach a maximum of ～6.5 TV/m for a 100TW laser pulse propagating over a distance of about I mm in a plasma at about 3% of the critical density. Along with this large electrostatic field electrons of a maximum of 195MeV are also found to be produced. We propose using this field generated by relativistically self-focused ultraintense laser pulses to acclerate injected ions. Several factors contribute to the possible acceleration including the self-focused pulse group velocity, pulse depletion, and plasma density.
展开▼
