In this paper we critically examine a concept which we term the ‘ponderomotive snowplow’. It has been alluded to by a number of authors, but a complete description is given by Sazegari et al (2006 Phys. Plasmas 13 033102). In this paper we present a critical analysis of this concept. As a strictly model problem, this is a valid idea. However it does not account for the longitudinal electrostatic field that must be generated in an actual laser-plasma interaction. Both analytic and numerical investigations indicate that the effects of this are hard to neglect, and lead to an effective ponderomotive snowplow that works—as described by Sazegari—as an effective electron accelerator being hard to realize.

在本文中，我们批判性地研究了一个概念，我们称之为“ponderomotive 扫雪机”。许多作者都提到了它，但 Sazegari等人(2006 Phys. Plasmas 13 033102)给出了完整的描述。在本文中，我们对这一概念进行了批判性分析。作为一个严格的模型问题，这是一个有效的想法。然而，它没有考虑在实际激光等离子体相互作用中必须产生的纵向静电场。分析和数值研究都表明，这种影响很难被忽视，并导致有效的有质除雪机（如 Sazegari 所描述的）作为一种难以实现的有效电子加速器起作用。