Three-dimensional radiation hydrodynamic simulations of laser-produced air plasma - aluminum slab interaction

The interaction of laser-produced hot air plasma with a solid aluminum target and the subsequent shockwave (SW) dynamics in the target is studied using the three-dimensional FLASH Eulerian radiation hydrodynamic (3D-RHD)^1,2 numerical simulations performed in the Cartesian geometry. The high-temperature air plasma to Al target distance was taken as 1 mm. The air plasma is generated by focusing a laser pulse of 10 ns with energies 0.2 – 0.5 J at 532nm to a spot diameter of 500 µm. The rapidly expanding forward-moving plasma interacts with the Al slab resulting in the reflection of the plasma and launches SW onto the target surface. The reflected plasma accelerated the steep expansion of the plasma along the laser propagation direction. The evolution of SW was analyzed for different laser intensities.
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2. http://flash.uchicago.edu/site/index.shtml