Simulations

The interpretation of experimental data about laser-plasma-interaction will often require accompanying simulations. We employ various programs for ionisation, plasma generation and radiation generation for this task.

Most of all we use a self-developed numerical code for particle-in-cell simulations. This code is used for analyzing the interaction of strong laser pulses with a pre-ionized plasma target. One main task is finding these microscopic processes which lead to the generation of the so-called surface harmonics (i.e. coherent hard radiation propagating together with the reflected light pulse). We aim at a basic understanding such that this special light source may be further optimized. The parallel relativistic code, which works in two or three spatial dimensions, is continuously optimized and adapted to current problems.