Influence of plasma inhomogeneity and ohmic heating on the nonlinear absorption of intense laser pulse in collisional magnetized plasma

Abstract

The nonlinear absorption in the interaction of an intense laser pulse with a collisional magnetized plasma is studied by considering the effects of plasma inhomogeneity, ohmic heating, and ponderomotive force. For this purpose, we obtain the plasma electron density, the effective dielectric permittivity, and the wave equation using the Maxwell and hydrodynamic equations and solve this equation by the Runge–Kutta numerical method. The results are shown that by increasing the plasma inhomogeneity, the inverse bremsstrahlung absorption coefficient is increased, and also the density ramp parameter $\left({\sigma }_1\right)$ and its sign can affect more the absorption coefficient than the temperature ramp parameter $\left({\sigma }_2\right)$. However, when the initial electron density and temperature increase, the laser field amplitude and the absorption coefficient are increased and the spatial damping rate of the laser pulse becomes highly peaked inside the plasma. It is shown by increasing laser pulse energy, the nonlinear bremsstrahlung absorption coefficient is decreased significantly. The results also indicate that by increasing the external magnetic field, the dielectric permittivity is decreased while the laser energy spatial damping, and the absorption coefficient are increased. Moreover, it is found that by considering the ohmic heating effect, the electrons absorb further energy from the fields and consequently the nonlinear absorption is increased.