Subpicosecond pulse laser absorption by an overdense plasma with variable ionization.

Transient ionization of an overdense plasma produced by a subpicosecond, p-polarized obliquely incident pulse laser of moderate intensity (10(16)-10(18) W/cm(2)) changes the plasma heat transfer via processes dominated by the return current and the absorption rate via ion acceleration. To explore the effect of variable ionization, a hybrid one-dimensional electro-magnetic particle-in-cell method that conforms to a direct solution of the Fokker-Planck-Landau equation is applied. A method that includes the Langevin equation to account for Coulomb collisions and the average ion model to calculate the nonlocal thermodynamic equilibrium ionization balance provides good agreement between the computed absorption and the measured results.