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The problem of the 'hole-boring' (HB)-type of radiation pressure acceleration of ions by circularly polarized laser pulses interacting with overdense plasmas is considered in the regime where the dimensionless scaling parameter I/ρc 3 becomes large. In this regime a non-relativistic treatment of the 'HB' problem is no longer adequate. A new set of fully relativistic formulae for the mean ion energy and 'HB' velocity is derived and validated against one-dimensional particle-in-cell simulations. It is also found that the finite acceleration time of the ions results in large energy spreads in the accelerated ion beam even under the highly idealized conditions of constant laser intensity and uniform mass density.

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Recent theoretical and experimental research with short-pulse, high-intensity lasers is surveyed with particular emphasis on new physical processes that occur in interactions with low-and high-density plasmas. Basic models of femtosecond laser-solid interaction are described including collisional absorption, transport, hydrodynamics, fast electron and hard x-ray generation, together with recently predicted phenomena at extreme intensities, such as gigagauss magnetic fields and induced transparency. New developments in the complementary field of nonlinear propagation in ionized gases are reviewed, including field ionization, relativistic selffocusing, wakefield generation and scattering instabilities. Applications in the areas of x-ray generation for medical and biological imaging, new coherent light sources, nonlinear wave guiding and particle acceleration are also examined.