Heating of a dense plasma by an ultrashort laser pulse in the anomalous skin-effect regime

The absorption of laser light in an overdense plasma with a sharp boundary and the heating of the plasma under conditions corresponding to the anomalous skin effect are studied. Heat transfer from the absorption region near the surface into the interior of the plasma is studied in the kinetic approximation. At high intensities of the laser pulse, the electron distribution function is deformed, and the plasma is heated at a rate tens of times that predicted by classical heat-transfer theory, because of the severe limitation on thermal conductivity. The anisotropy of the electron distribution function in the skin layer leads to an increase in the absorption coefficient. The angular distribution and the polarization dependence of the absorption coefficient are discussed