Energy depletion of intense, short-pulse lasers via excitation of plasma waves is investigated numerically and analytically. The evolution of a resonant laser pulse proceeds in two phases. In the first phase, the pulse steepens, compresses, and frequency red-shifts as energy is deposited in the plasma. The second phase of evolution occurs after the pulse reaches a minimum length at which point the pulse rapidly lengthens, losing resonance with the plasma. Expressions for the rate of laser energy loss and rate of laser red-shifting are derived and are found to be in excellent agreement with the direct numerical solution of the laser field evolution coupled to the plasma response. Both processes are shown to have the same characteristic length-scale. In the high intensity limit, for nearly-resonant Gaussian laser pulses, this scale length is shown to be independent of laser intensity.

The connection between macro-particle shape functions and non-physical phase-space "heating" in the particle-in-cell (PIC) algorithm is examined. The development of fine-scale phasespace structures starting from a cold initial condition is shown to be related to spatial correlations in the interpolated fields used in the Lorentz force. It is shown that the plasma evolution via the PIC algorithm from a cold initial condition leads to a state that is not consistent with that of a thermal plasma.

We present an overview of a new warm fluid model that incorporates leading-order kinetic corrections to the cold fluid model without making any near-equilibrium assumptions. In the quasi-static limit we obtain analytical expressions for the momentum spread and show excellent agreement with solutions of the full time-dependant equations. It is shown that over a large range of initial plasma temperatures, the fields are relatively insensitive to the pressure force. We discus implications of this work for model validation.

A warm, relativistic fluid theory of a nonequilibrium, collisionless plasma is developed to analyze nonlinear plasma waves excited byintense drive beams. The maximum amplitude and wavelength are calculated for nonrelativistic plasma temperatures and arbitrary plasma wave phase velocities. The maximum amplitude is shown to increase in the presence of a laser field. These results set a limit to the achievable gradient in plasma-based accelerators.

Using higher-order transverse laser modes as drivers for plasma wave excitation, and, in particular, using a ring laser beam with maximum intensity off-axis, results in reversal of the focusing anddefocusing phase regions in a laser wakefield accelerator. This results in improved performance of self-trapping and laser injection schemes. Specifically, the trapping threshold required for opticalinjection is decreased and the maximum energy gain of the trapped electrons is increased. This scheme could also be of interest for the generation of ring electron beams or for beam conditioning.