Laser pulse ellipticity and ionization effects

In this paper we study the influence of light ellipticity and pulse shaping on dynamics of laser plasma. We consider Bessel-Gauss beams with linear and circular polarization. It has been shown that a circularly polarized femtosecond laser pulse generates a denser plasma compared to a linearly polarized beam. For the dual-pulse setup changes in the ellipticity of the nanosecond heating pulse affect the electron temperature, maximum electron number density, and plasma decay dynamics. For the linearly polarized Bessel-Gauss beams a change in the angular half-aperture of the cone affectsthe magnitude of local peaks of the electron density at the plasma edges.