Acceleration of electrons under the action of petawatt-class laser pulses onto foam targets

Optimization study for future experiments on interaction of petawatt laser pulses with foam targets was done by 3D PIC simulations. Densities in the range 0.5nc-nc and thicknesses in the range 100-500μm of the targets were considered corresponding to those which are currently available. It is shown that heating of electrons mainly occurs under the action of the ponderomotive force of a laser pulse in which amplitude increases up to three times because of self-focusing effect in underdense plasma. Accelerated electrons gain additional energy directly from the high-frequency laser field at the betatron resonance in the emerging plasma density channels. For thicker targets a higher number of electrons with higher energies are obtained. The narrowing of the angular distribution of electrons for thicker targets is explained by acceleration in multiple narrow filaments. Obtained energies of accelerated electrons can be approximated by Maxwell distribution with the temperature 8.5 MeV. The charge carried by electrons with energies higher than 30 MeV is about 30 nC, that is 3-4 order of magnitude higher than the charge predicted by the ponderomotive scaling for the incident laser amplitude.