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Ablative acceleration of thin-foil targets at low laser irradiance (10¹²-10¹³ W/cm²) is studied experimentally and theoretically. Ablative acceleration of foils up to {~}10⁷ cm/sec with good hydrodynamic efficiency (20%) has been achieved. These and other results are in good agreement with a simple rocket model.
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Décoste et al. (1979) studied this question.
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