https://doi.org/10.1140/epjs/s11734-025-01547-6
Regular Article
Influence of the laser intensity on the resistive filamentation during intense electron beam transport in aluminum targets
1
Department of Physics, National University of Defense Technology, 410073, Changsha, China
2
Department of Nuclear Science and Technology, National University of Defense Technology, 410073, Changsha, China
3
School of Computer Science, National University of Defense Technology, 410073, Changsha, China
a
weiquan.wang@nudt.edu.cn
b
yyin@nudt.edu.cn
Received:
10
August
2024
Accepted:
21
February
2025
Published online:
7
March
2025
The influence of laser intensity on the resistive filamentation during intense electron beam transport in aluminum targets is investigated through theoretical analysis and three-dimensional hybrid simulations. Analysis of linear filamentation instabilities indicates that resistive filamentation is more likely to occur under high laser-intensity conditions. Our simulations reveal the underlying physical mechanisms: when the laser intensity is below a critical value (corresponding to the collimation parameter 
=1), the strong self-generated resistive field effectively suppresses electron beam filamentation, resulting in collimated transport. As the laser intensity increases, the enhanced current density, the larger divergence angle of the electron beam, and higher laser energy conversion efficiency counteract the pinching effect of the resistive magnetic field. This leads to a significant filamentation, with the current magnitude of each filament approaching the Alfvén current limit. Additionally, our study demonstrates that higher energy conversion efficiency increases the incident current density, thereby promoting filamentation instability, while larger initial divergence angles weaken the magnetic collimation effect, further enhancing filamentation.
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© The Author(s), under exclusive licence to EDP Sciences, Springer-Verlag GmbH Germany, part of Springer Nature 2025
Springer Nature or its licensor (e.g. a society or other partner) holds exclusive rights to this article under a publishing agreement with the author(s) or other rightsholder(s); author self-archiving of the accepted manuscript version of this article is solely governed by the terms of such publishing agreement and applicable law.
