New skin depth plasma interaction by ps-TW laser pulses and consequences for fusion energy

A new type of MeV ion generation at laser-plasma interaction has been measured based on the observation [1] that ps neodymium glass laser pulses of about TW and higher power do not produce the relativistic self-focusing based very high ion energies but more than 50 times lower energies. On top the strange observation was reported [1] that the number of the emitted fast ions did not change at variation of the laser focus intensity by a factor of 30. This can be explained by the effect that without an irradiating prepulse, a pure plane geometric skin layer interaction mechanismoccurs [2]. Neither relativistic self-focusing is possible nor the process of thermalization of quiver energy by quantum modified collisions. Following our conclusions about the difficulties for the fast ignitor concept of laser fusion [3], we can explain how these mechanisms can be used for studying the self-sustained fusion combustion waves [4] as known from the spark ignition at laser fusion. We further expect an improvement of the conditions for the experiments [5] with the highest laser fusion gains ever reported where even no pre-compression of the fusion plasma was necessary.