Introduction to Laser-Plasma Interactions

This textbook provides a comprehensive introduction to the physics of laser-plasma interactions (LPI), based on a graduate course taught by the author. The emphasis is on high-energy-density physics (HEDP) and inertial confinement fusion (ICF), with a comprehensive description of the propagation, absorption, nonlinear effects and parametric instabilities of high energy lasers in plasmas.

The recent demonstration of a burning plasma on the verge of nuclear fusion ignition at the National Ignition Facility in Livermore, California, has marked the beginning of a new era of ICF and fusion research. These new developments make LPI more relevant than ever, and the resulting influx of new scientists necessitates new pedagogical material on the subject. In contrast to the classical textbooks on LPI, this book provides a complete description of all wave-coupling instabilities in unmagnetized plasmas in the kinetic as well as fluid pictures, and includes a comprehensive description of the optical smoothing techniques used on high-power lasers and their impact on laser-plasma instabilities. It summarizes all the key developments from the 1970s to the present day in view of the current state of LPI and ICF research; it provides a derivation of the key LPI metrics and formulas from first principles, and connects the theory to experimental observables.

With exercises and plenty of illustrations, this book is ideal as a textbook for a course on laser-plasma interactions or as a supplementary text for graduate introductory plasma physics course. Students and researchers will also find it to be an invaluable reference and self-study resource.

Pierre Michel received his Ph.D. in physics from the Ecole Polytechnique in Paris in 2003, where he worked on experiment and modeling of long-pulse laser-plasma interactions. From 2004 to 2006 he was a postdoctoral Fellow at Lawrence Berkeley Laboratory, working in the BELLA Center on laser wakefield acceleration and laser-plasma-based ultra-short x-ray sources. He has been at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL) since 2006, where he is a group leader for laser-plasma interaction (LPI) physics in the National Ignition Facility Directorate and has been the principal investigator on several projects on plasma- and gas-optics. He is a visiting scientist at the University of California, Berkeley, and has taught online lectures on LPI through the LLNL High Energy Density Center. He has published over a hundred papers on short- and long-pulse LPI, is a recipient of the Edouard Fabre Prize (European Physical Society), the John Dawson Award for Excellence in Plasma Physics (American Physical Society) and is a Fellow of the American Physical Society.