Overview of studies on ultra-short relativistic laser-solid material interactions in HZDR

Control of ultra-short relativistic laser-solid material interactions requires modelling of transient, non-equilibrium processes on the atomic scale. We present recent results on ultrafast plasma dynamics for ion heating in buried layer targets [1], ionization dynamics, instabilities and filamentation [2]. In order to connect the plasma dynamics seen in simulations with experiments we will discuss the role of in-situ synthetic diagnostics that mimic experimental diagnostics. As one key example we propose to use X-Ray Free Electron Lasers for probing laser-driven solid-density plasmas by small angle X-ray scattering [3] which allows for femtosecond resolution of transient plasma processes. With these techniques, probing fundamental plasma properties will allow for direct comparison to simulations, challenging state of the art theoretical modeling of collisions, ionization, radiation transport and atomic processes. Increasing the predictive capability of codes will require highly-scalable simulations [4] in order to estimate the influence of these models on the systematic error.

[1] L. G. Huang et al., Phys. Plasmas 20, 093109 (2013)
[2] J. Metzkes et al., New J. Phys. 16, 023008 (2014)
[3] T. Kluge et al., arXiv, 1306.0420 (2013)
[4] M. Bussmann et al., Proceedings of SC’13, 5-1 (2013)