Skin effect and interaction of short laser pulses with dense plasmas

In this paper we discuss interaction of intense, subpicosecond laser pulses with plasmas. We propose a self-consistent analytical model of the anomalous and normal skin effects in plasmas with steplike density profile. The heat transport is described by classical Spitzer conductivity with new boundary conditions accounting for laser absorption in the thin skin layer. We obtain self-similar solutions for the heat-conduction problem, and the scaling laws for important plasma parameters are also discussed. Our predictions are consistent with the recent experimental results.