Ponderomotive Memory Effect and the Laser Wake-Field Generation

APPLICATIONS
  ~laser-plasma (matter) interaction by laser pulses
  ~laser wake-field generation and acceleration of charged particles
  ~wave heating of plasmas

The fast-time-averaged electron distribution function as a solution of the kinetic diffusion
equation in the presence of a hf electric wave field is found to be given by

E(x, t) representing the slowly varying electric field envelope such as a hump localized in x and t.
Three ponderomotive effects can be distinguished:

1. cavity formation by pp in the exponential,
2. fake heating by pp in the denominator of the argument in the exponential, and
3. wake field generation by pmt manifested by the emission of streamers, jets and heatfluxes.

Notice that the latter effect weakens cavity formation.

Space-time plot of ponderomotive potential (assumed):

Space-time plot of ponderomotive density (derived):

  [1] H.Schamel, Ponderomotive Effects in a Plasma, Phys.Rev.Lett. 42 (1979) 1339-1341

  [2] H.Schamel and Ch.Sack, Existence of a time-dependent heat flux-related 
  ponderomotive effect, Phys.Fluids 23 (1980) 1532-1545

  [3] H.Schamel and Ch.Sack, A new  ponderomotive  effect in wave heating,
  Proc.2nd  Joint Grenoble-Varenna Int.Symp.on Heating in Toroidal Plasmas,
  Como 1980, Vol.II  1123-1128 ,
  published by Commission of the European Communities EUR 7424 EN 
  [4] U.Wolf and H.Schamel, Wake-field generation by the ponderomotive 
  memory effect, Phys.Rev.E 56 (1997) 4656-4664