The Radiation Reaction Effect on Electrons at Super-High Laser Intensities with Application to Ion Acceleration

At super-high laser intensities the radiation back reaction on electrons becomes so significant that its influence on laser-plasma interaction cannot be neglected while simulating these processes with particle-in-cell (PIC) codes. We discuss a way of taking the radiation effect on electrons into account and extracting spatial and frequency distributions of the generated high-frequency radiation. We also examine ponderomotive acceleration of ions in the double layer created by strong laser pulses and we compare an analytical description with PIC simulations as well. We discuss: (1) non-stationary features found in simulations, (2) electron cooling effect due to radiation losses, and (3) the limits of the analytical model.