Isochoric heating of hot dense matter by magnetization of fast electrons produced by ultra-intense short pulse irradiation

Ultra-intense short-pulse lasers are important tools for creating short-lived high energy plasmas, however to date, it has not been possible, with this method, to create several hundred eV solid density matter because of the rapid transport of the laser-generated hot electrons throughout the target volume. We propose a new way to isochorically heat matter at solid density to extreme temperatures by magnetic confinement of laser-generated hot electrons for several picoseconds by application of a multi-MG external field. In advance of an experiment at the Nevada Terawatt Facility (NTF), using a 100 TW-class laser, which will be synchronized to a 1 MA Z-pinch machine, we have performed theoretical studies using a collisional particle-in-cell codes PICLS, which is optimized for a study of isochoric heating of solid density plasmas. PICLS results show that temperatures as high as several hundred eV may be achievable for sufficiently large volumes and sufficiently long times (several ps). (authors)