Ablation Nonuniformity on Laser Irradiated Pellet and Collisional Hot Electron Filamentation

Abstract

Filamentary structure in ablated corona plastma on laser irradiated pellet was observed in optical shadowgrams by a visible probe light. Several mechanisms are discussed and a collisional hot electron filamentation theory is proposed to explain it. Such filamentation may be a serious obstacle for spherically symmetric compression of laser fusion pellets.