About the Book
After 60 years of the invention of laser, it has grown as a new light source
indispensable for our life. The application to industrial and research has spread
over wide fields. The book discusses how the power lasers are absorbed by matter
and how high temperature and high density plasmas are produced. It is noted
that such plasmas are mimics of the plasmas in the Universe, namely, plasma
inside of stars, exploding plasma like supernovae, accelerating plasma like cosmic
ray. The book (Vol. 1) gives the physics of the intense laser and material
interaction to produce such plasmas. The physics is explained intuitively so that
non-specialists can obtain clear images about how the laser energy is converted to
the non-thermal plasma energy; simply saying, how laser heats matter. For intense
laser of 10
13–16 W/cm
2 , the laser energy is mainly absorbed via collisional process,
where the oscillation energy is converted to thermal energy by non-adiabatic
Coulomb collision with the ions. Collisionless interactions with the collective
modes in plasma are also described. The main topics are the interaction of ultraintense laser and plasma interaction for the intensity near and over 10
18 W/cm
2 . In
such regime, relativistic dynamics become essential. A new physics appears due to
the relativistic effects, such as mass correction, relativistic nonlinear force, chaos
physics of particle motions, and so on. The book provides clearly the theoretical base
for challenging the laser-plasma interaction physics in the wide range of power
lasers.
xi
After 60 years of the invention of laser, it has grown as a new light source
indispensable for our life. The application to industrial and research has spread
over wide fields. The book discusses how the power lasers are absorbed by matter
and how high temperature and high density plasmas are produced. It is noted
that such plasmas are mimics of the plasmas in the Universe, namely, plasma
inside of stars, exploding plasma like supernovae, accelerating plasma like cosmic
ray. The book (Vol. 1) gives the physics of the intense laser and material
interaction to produce such plasmas. The physics is explained intuitively so that
non-specialists can obtain clear images about how the laser energy is converted to
the non-thermal plasma energy; simply saying, how laser heats matter. For intense
laser of 10
13–16 W/cm
2 , the laser energy is mainly absorbed via collisional process,
where the oscillation energy is converted to thermal energy by non-adiabatic
Coulomb collision with the ions. Collisionless interactions with the collective
modes in plasma are also described. The main topics are the interaction of ultraintense laser and plasma interaction for the intensity near and over 10
18 W/cm
2 . In
such regime, relativistic dynamics become essential. A new physics appears due to
the relativistic effects, such as mass correction, relativistic nonlinear force, chaos
physics of particle motions, and so on. The book provides clearly the theoretical base
for challenging the laser-plasma interaction physics in the wide range of power
lasers.
xi