| I will review recent advances in the interaction of intense lasers with plasmas taking advantage of large scale numerical simulations discussing both fundamental aspects, such as the possibility to mimic in the laboratory relativistic astrophysical shocks, or more applied developments, in connection with plasma based particle accelerators and the possibility to achieve unprecedented ultra high accelerating gradients in excess of 1 GeV/cm, to generate multi-GeV electron beams or monoenergetic proton beams. In all these scenarios, numerical simulations are critical to capture the highly nonlinear dynamics underlying these scenarios, and I will also review and discussed the challenges facing numerical modeling of these scenarios and applications. |
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