Effects of laser-plasma instabilities on hydro evolution in an OMEGA-EP long-scale-length experiment

Laser-plasma instabilities and hydro evolution of the coronal plasma in an OMEGA EP longscale- length experiment with planar targets were studied with particle-in-cell (PIC) and hydrodynamic simulations. Plasma and laser conditions were first obtained in a two-dimensional DRACO hydro simulation with only inverse-bremsstrahlung absorption. Using these conditions, an OSIRIS PIC simulation was performed to study laser absorption and hot-electron generation caused by laser-plasma instabilities (LPIs) near the quarter-critical region. The obtained PIC information was subsequently coupled to another DRACO simulation to examine how the LPIs affect the overall hydrodynamics. The results showed that the LPI-induced laser absorption increased the electron temperature but did not significantly change the density scale length in the corona.