Explosion of relativistic electron vortices in laser plasmas

The interaction of high intensity laser radiation with an underdense plasma may lead to the formation of electron vortices. Though being quasistationary on the electron timescales, these structures tend to expand on a proton timescale due to Coulomb repulsion of ions. Using a simple analytical model of a stationary vortex as an initial condition, 2D PIC simulations are performed. A number of effects are observed such as vortex boundary field intensification, multistream instabilities at the vortex boundary, and bending of the vortex boundary with the subsequent transformation into smaller electron vortices.