Hydrodynamic simulation of XUV laser-produced plasmas

With the construction of novel XUV sources, such as VUV FEL's, XUV laser-matter interaction will become available at ultra-high intensities. But even tabletop facilities such as XUV lasers or High Harmonic Generation, are starting to reach intensities high enough to produce dense plasmas. XUV laser-matter interaction is studied by a ID hydrodynamic Lagrangian code with radiative transfer for a range of interesting XUV sources. Heating is found to be very different for Z = 12-14 elements having Ledges around the XUV laser wavelength. Possible absorption mechanisms were investigated in order to explain this behaviour, and interaction with cold dense matter proved to be dominant. Plasma sensitivity to XUV laser parameters such as energy, pulse duration, and wavelength was also studied, covering ranges of existing XUV lasers. We found that XUV laser-produced plasmas could be studied using tabletop lasers, paving the way for future VUV-FEL high intensity experiments.