CORRELATED QUANTUM PLASMAS IN STRONG LASER FIELDS

Inverse Bremsstrahlung absorption of dense fully ionized plasmas in strong laser fields is investigated starting from a quantum kinetic equation with non-Markovian and field dependent collision integrals. First, the dynamically screened Born approximation is considered. For high-frequency laser fields, quantum statistical expressions for the electrical current density and the cycle-averaged electron–ion collision frequency in terms of the Lindhard dielectric function are derived. The expressions are valid for arbitrary field strength assuming the nonrelativistic case. Numerical results are presented to discuss these quantities as a function of the applied laser field and for different plasma parameters. In particular, the influence of non-Maxwellian electron distribution functions is discussed. Furthermore, a generalized expression for the absorption rate is presented to study effects of strong electron–electron and ion–ion correlations, respectively.