Growth, saturation and breaking down of laser-driven plasma density gratings.

The plasma density grating induced by intersecting intense laser pulses can be utilized as an optical compressor, polarizer, waveplate and photonic crystal for the manipulation of ultra-high-power laser pulses. However, the formation and evolution of the plasma density grating are still not fully investigated as linear models are adopted to describe them usually. In this paper, two nonlinear theoretical models are presented to describe the formation process of the plasma density grating. In the first model, a nonlinear analytical solution based on the fluid equations is deduced while in the second model the particle mesh method is adopted to indicate the kinetic effects. It is found that both models can describe the plasma density grating formation at different stages, well beyond the linear growth stage. Using the second model, the expression of the saturation time of plasma density grating is obtained as a function of laser intensity and plasma density, which can be applied to estimate the lifetime of the plasma density grating in experiments. The results from these two nonlinear theoretical models are verified using particle-in-cell simulations.