Plasma formation through field ionization in intense laser–matter interaction

Optical field ionization is the earliest and fastest plasma-generating process during the interaction of intense laser light with matter. By using short and rapidly rising laser pulses, the free electron density may turn from being transparent for an incoming laser pulse to reflective in less than half a laser cycle, that is, on a subfemtosecond timescale. Extremely nonlinear optical effects arise as a consequence of this. In this article, the...