Multi-scale simulation of intense laser plasma interactions
Lead Research Organisation:
University of Warwick
Department Name: Physics
Abstract
The UK is at the forefront of high power laser-plasma research through the work of the Central Laser Facility, which has consistently received the highest praise at international review. The recently formed Collaborative Computational Project in plasma physics (CCPP) directs a substantial part of its research effort towards modelling laser-plasma interactions, driven particularly by the existing experimental programme at the CLF and the proposal to extend this to even higher intensities with the Vulcan 10PW project. Two extremely important new developments are the European HiPER project for a laser based inertial confinement fusion demonstrator and the rapidly emerging application of laser-plasmas to light source applications for ultra-short pulses in the X-ray and gamma-ray spectrum. Laboratory applications of ultra-high power laser-plasmas also include medical applications using radiation and particle beams for diagnosis and therapy and the extreme conditions in some of these plasmas serve as laboratory analogues for astrophysical objects.It is vital that computer codes are available to help progress these new developments in plasma physics. The physics accessed by these experiments is often non-linear, relativistic and couples across many orders of magnitude of scale lengths and time scales. To understand the experiments and help improve performance computational modelling is an indispensable tool. The ranges of length and time scales that are relevant to these highly dynamical plasmas make it difficult to model the whole problem with a single numerical technique. For instance, in the case of HiPER fusion targets, MHD fluid models are appropriate during the compression phase, while the ensuing heating and burn phases require detailed kinetic modelling and the transport of particles across a density range of four orders of magnitude. Experiments planned for the Vulcan 10PW laser will probe quantum electrodynamic (QED) phenomena at the scale of the electron Compton length while laboratory experiments on magnetic reconnection may involve lengths up to 1 cm. There is still no single method which is applicable to the entirety of circumstances of laser plasma experiments but the Particle in Cell method (PIC) is remarkably robust, immediately useful for many of the high intensity experiments, and has the potential to be extended at short length scales towards the quantum regime and also at long scales towards the fluid regime using methods which, while very different in terms of physics, are similar in terms of the computational requirements.This exploration of new regimes of plasma physics requires new software to be developed to include this new physics. This project will extend the current codes used for plasma simulations in several directions. They will be optimised to make use of the largest computers, using 1000's of processor on national supercomputing facilities. The codes will be extend to include particle collisions in a novel, and fast, way enabling the extension to longer lengths and time scales. Including QED effects will extend their applicability down to shorter scale lengths and more intense lasers. Radiation from individual electrons, including coherent radiation, will help probe the new regimes expected to deliver the next generation of short pulse light sources. Finally all of this will be combined into a single computational tool allowing UK plasma physicists to easily exploit the tools they need to understand the next generation of experiments and establish a world leading role for UK computational laser plasma physics to compliment it's already established reputation in experimental laser plasma science.
Organisations
Publications
Arber T
(2015)
Contemporary particle-in-cell approach to laser-plasma modelling
in Plasma Physics and Controlled Fusion
Arefiev A
(2015)
Novel aspects of direct laser acceleration of relativistic electrons
in Journal of Plasma Physics
Arefiev A
(2015)
Temporal resolution criterion for correctly simulating relativistic electron motion in a high-intensity laser field
in Physics of Plasmas
Arefiev A
(2015)
Kinetic simulations of X-B and O-X-B mode conversion
Aurand B
(2013)
Radiation pressure-assisted acceleration of ions using multi-component foils in high-intensity laser-matter interactions
in New Journal of Physics
Bacon E
(2022)
High order modes of intense second harmonic light produced from a plasma aperture
in Matter and Radiation at Extremes
Bennett, K
(2013)
EPOCH manual
Bocoum M
(2016)
Anticorrelated Emission of High Harmonics and Fast Electron Beams From Plasma Mirrors.
in Physical review letters
Brady C
(2013)
Gamma-ray emission in near critical density plasmas
in Plasma Physics and Controlled Fusion
Brady C
(2012)
Rapid filamentation of high power lasers at the quarter critical surface
in Physics of Plasmas
Brady C
(2014)
Synchrotron radiation, pair production, and longitudinal electron motion during 10-100 PW laser solid interactions
in Physics of Plasmas
Brady C
(2011)
An ion acceleration mechanism in laser illuminated targets with internal electron density structure
in Plasma Physics and Controlled Fusion
Brady CS
(2012)
Laser absorption in relativistically underdense plasmas by synchrotron radiation.
in Physical review letters
Capdessus R
(2016)
Radiating electron source generation in ultraintense laser-foil interactions
in Physics of Plasmas
Cook JWS
(2017)
Stimulated Emission of Fast Alfvén Waves within Magnetically Confined Fusion Plasmas.
in Physical review letters
Di Lucchio L
(2015)
Relativistic attosecond electron bunch emission from few-cycle laser irradiated nanoscale droplets
in Physical Review Special Topics - Accelerators and Beams
Di Lucchio L
(2015)
Ion acceleration by intense, few-cycle laser pulses with nanodroplets
in Physics of Plasmas
Dieckmann M
(2015)
Shocks in unmagnetized plasma with a shear flow: Stability and magnetic field generation
in Physics of Plasmas
Dieckmann M
(2014)
Evolution of slow electrostatic shock into a plasma shock mediated by electrostatic turbulence
in New Journal of Physics
Dolier E
(2022)
Multi-parameter Bayesian optimisation of laser-driven ion acceleration in particle-in-cell simulations
in New Journal of Physics
Dover N
(2016)
Optical shaping of gas targets for laser-plasma ion sources
in Journal of Plasma Physics
Duff M
(2019)
Multi-stage scheme for nonlinear Breit-Wheeler pair-production utilising ultra-intense laser-solid interactions
in Plasma Physics and Controlled Fusion
Duff M
(2018)
Modelling the effects of the radiation reaction force on the interaction of thin foils with ultra-intense laser fields
in Plasma Physics and Controlled Fusion
Edwards M
(2016)
Short-pulse amplification by strongly coupled stimulated Brillouin scattering
in Physics of Plasmas
Edwards M
(2016)
Multipass relativistic high-order-harmonic generation for intense attosecond pulses
in Physical Review A
Edwards M
(2015)
The efficiency of Raman amplification in the wavebreaking regime
in Physics of Plasmas
Edwards MR
(2019)
Laser Amplification in Strongly Magnetized Plasma.
in Physical review letters
Edwards MR
(2017)
X-ray amplification by stimulated Brillouin scattering.
in Physical review. E
Edwards MR
(2016)
Strongly Enhanced Stimulated Brillouin Backscattering in an Electron-Positron Plasma.
in Physical review letters
Edwards MR
(2020)
Electron-Nanobunch-Width-Dominated Spectral Power Law for Relativistic Harmonic Generation from Ultrathin Foils.
in Physical review letters
Edwards MR
(2016)
Waveform-Controlled Relativistic High-Order-Harmonic Generation.
in Physical review letters
Engin, I
(2015)
Towards a Laser-driven polarized 3He Ion Beam Source
Farinella D
(2016)
High energy photon emission from wakefields
in Physics of Plasmas
Frazer T
(2020)
Enhanced laser intensity and ion acceleration due to self-focusing in relativistically transparent ultrathin targets
in Physical Review Research
Gonzalez-Izquierdo B
(2016)
Optically controlled dense current structures driven by relativistic plasma aperture-induced diffraction
in Nature Physics
Gonzalez-Izquierdo B
(2016)
Towards optical polarization control of laser-driven proton acceleration in foils undergoing relativistic transparency.
in Nature communications
Gonzalez-Izquierdo B
(2016)
Influence of laser polarization on collective electron dynamics in ultraintense laser-foil interactions
in High Power Laser Science and Engineering
Gopal A
(2013)
MegaGauss magnetic field generation by ultra-short pulses at relativistic intensities
in Plasma Physics and Controlled Fusion
Graf Von Der Pahlen J
(2016)
Role of electron inertia and reconnection dynamics in a stressed X -point collapse with a guide-field
in Astronomy & Astrophysics
Gray R
(2014)
Azimuthal asymmetry in collective electron dynamics in relativistically transparent laser-foil interactions
in New Journal of Physics
Gray R
(2014)
Laser pulse propagation and enhanced energy coupling to fast electrons in dense plasma gradients
in New Journal of Physics
Gu Y
(2015)
Fast magnetic field annihilation driven by two laser pulses in underdense plasma
in Physics of Plasmas
Gu YJ
(2016)
Fast magnetic-field annihilation in the relativistic collisionless regime driven by two ultrashort high-intensity laser pulses.
in Physical review. E
Gunst J
(2015)
Direct and secondary nuclear excitation with x-ray free-electron lasers
in Physics of Plasmas
Hu Q
(2017)
Intense EM filamentation in relativistic hot plasmas
in Physics Letters A
Huang TW
(2017)
Relativistic laser hosing instability suppression and electron acceleration in a preformed plasma channel.
in Physical review. E
Jirka M
(2016)
Electron dynamics and ? and e(-)e(+) production by colliding laser pulses.
in Physical review. E
Ju LB
(2017)
Production of high-angular-momentum electron beams in laser-plasma interactions.
in Physical review. E
King M
(2016)
Ion acceleration and plasma jet formation in ultra-thin foils undergoing expansion and relativistic transparency
in Nuclear Instruments and Methods in Physics Research Section A: Accelerators, Spectrometers, Detectors and Associated Equipment
King M
(2023)
Perspectives on laser-plasma physics in the relativistic transparency regime
in The European Physical Journal A
Description | There has been considerable international interest in a community plasma code for particle-in-cell (PIC) simulations. Understanding the community needs has lead to the development of an open project based on a modern redesign of PIC techniques. The resulting EPOCH code has re-invigorated this area of computational physics. Work on the EPOCH project continues through follow on EPSRC funding. |
Exploitation Route | The EPOCH is freely available world-wide with hundreds of international users in addition to its use in all UK plasma physics research groups. The key paper describing EPOCH is cited around 100 times per year with the EPOCH code used in roughly 40 papers per year. The development of EPOCH continues to be funded by EPSRC and the large community of users and developers is expected to keep EPOCH central to UK plasma physics research for at least a decade. |
Sectors | Communities and Social Services/Policy,Education,Electronics,Energy |
URL | https://cfsa-pmw.warwick.ac.uk/EPOCH/epoch/wikis/home |
Description | To handle the data from this project a new data format was developed (SDF). This is now used by one UK SME, Fluid Gravity limited, for their commercial codes. SDF is now released through GitHub. SDF allows complex data from HPC simulations to be easily ported between visualisation tools, HPC systems and applications. This has helped Fluid Gravity ltd. improve and harmonise their data management and has defined a standard for plasma physics with Warwick research. Beneficiaries: UK plasma physics code developers and UK SME Contribution Method: It replaced the existing data format used by SME in their commercial codes |
First Year Of Impact | 2012 |
Sector | Aerospace, Defence and Marine,Education,Energy |
Impact Types | Economic |
Description | CCP Flagship Project |
Amount | £380,448 (GBP) |
Funding ID | EP/M011534/1 |
Organisation | Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC) |
Sector | Public |
Country | United Kingdom |
Start | 04/2015 |
End | 03/2018 |
Description | Centre for Computational Plasma Physics |
Amount | £326,643 (GBP) |
Funding ID | Contract V30286915 |
Organisation | Atomic Weapons Establishment |
Sector | Private |
Country | United Kingdom |
Start | 07/2014 |
End | 06/2017 |
Description | Centre for Computational Plasma Physics |
Amount | £264,129 (GBP) |
Organisation | Atomic Weapons Establishment |
Sector | Private |
Country | United Kingdom |
Start | 10/2017 |
End | 09/2022 |
Description | Extension and optimisation of the EPOCH code |
Amount | £236,478 (GBP) |
Funding ID | EP/P02212X/1 |
Organisation | Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC) |
Sector | Public |
Country | United Kingdom |
Start | 06/2017 |
End | 05/2019 |
Description | Multi-scale simulations of intense laser-plasma interactions |
Amount | £439,082 (GBP) |
Funding ID | EP/G054940/1 |
Organisation | Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC) |
Sector | Public |
Country | United Kingdom |
Start | 01/2010 |
End | 03/2014 |
Description | Plasma Physics HEC Consortia |
Amount | £279,000 (GBP) |
Funding ID | EP/L000237/1 |
Organisation | Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC) |
Sector | Public |
Country | United Kingdom |
Start | 05/2013 |
End | 05/2018 |
Description | The Plasma-CCP Network |
Amount | £125,995 (GBP) |
Funding ID | EP/M022463/1 |
Organisation | Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC) |
Sector | Public |
Country | United Kingdom |
Start | 07/2015 |
End | 06/2020 |
Title | Release of EPOCH code |
Description | Release of the EPOCH particle-in-cell code as a publicly available software package. EPOCH has been developed primarily at the University of Warwick as a multi-purpose plasma simulation code. QED algorithms and code to model gamma-ray and electron-positron pair production were developed at Oxford. Warwick implemented the QED package in the publicly released version of EPOCH. The fully documented code is available at https://cfsa-pmw.warwick.ac.uk/EPOCH/epoch. It is being used by experimentalists and theorists from many countries. This initial release of EPOCH was in 2011 but this is continually updated. |
Type Of Technology | Software |
Year Produced | 2016 |
Open Source License? | Yes |
Impact | The UK is now recognised as a world leading centre for kinetic plasma simulations for laser-plasmas |
URL | https://cfsa-pmw.warwick.ac.uk/EPOCH/epoch |