Appearance of Density Cavitations in the Laser Wake in Simulations of High Intensity Laser-Plasma Interactions

Nonlinear interactions of high intensity, ultrashort laser pulses with underdense plasmas produce many interesting features that may appear in computer simulations. One of these features commonly observed in Particle-In-Cell (PIC) simulations is the spontaneous appearance of long-lived density cavitations in the plasma wake region behind the laser pulse. To study these cavitations, several small 2D PIC simulations are run in which plasma density, density ramps, total simulation time, laser pulsewidth, laser intensity, and laser polarization parameters have been varied. Based on the simulation results, some possible aspects of an experiment designed to directly detect these structures are discussed.