Non-linear processes in laser-plasma interaction

Nonlinear processes and instabilities significantly affect the propagation and absorption of an intense laser beam in an underdense plasma. These processes may be further affected by application of a strong external magnetic field as currently being used in some experiments. The understanding and the description of these processes is important especially in the context of inertial thermonuclear fusion research and the novel methods of its ignition. Kinetic simulations play a crucial role in this research. The topic of this work will be to study these processes, their evolution and mutual influence in the conditions corresponding to current experiments with the use of multidimensional kinetic simulation running of high-performance computational clusters. Collaboration with ELI-Beamlines, PALS and foreign research groups is foreseen.