Magnetic Cavitation and the Reemergence of Nonlocal Transport in Laser Plasmas

Ridgers, C. P. and Kingham, R. J. and Thomas, Alexander George Roy (2008) Magnetic Cavitation and the Reemergence of Nonlocal Transport in Laser Plasmas. Physical review letters, 100 (7): 075003. ISSN 1079-7114

Abstract

We present the first fully kinetic Vlasov-Fokker-Planck simulations of nanosecond laser-plasma interactions including self-consistent magnetic fields and hydrodynamic plasma expansion. For the largest magnetic fields externally applied to long-pulse laser-gas-jet experiments (12 T) a significant degree of cavitation of the B field ( > 40 % ) will be shown to occur from the laser-heated region in under half a nanosecond. This is due to the Nernst effect and leads to the reemergence of nonlocality even if the initial value of the magnetic field strength is sufficient to localize the transport.