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Intense lasers enable generating high-energy particle beams in university-scale laboratories. With the direct laser acceleration (DLA) method, the leading part of the laser pulse ionizes the target material and forms a positively charged ion plasma channel into which electrons are injected and accelerated. The high energy conversion efficiency of DLA makes it ideal for generating large numbers of photonuclear reactions. In this work, we reveal that, for efficient DLA to prevail, a target material of sufficiently high atomic number is required to maintain the injection of ionization electrons at the peak intensity of the pulse when the DLA channel is already formed. We demonstrate experimentally and numerically that, when the atomic number is too low, the target is depleted of its ionization electrons prematurely. Applying this understanding to multi-petawatt laser experiments is expected to result in increased neutron yields, a perquisite for a wide range of research and applications. 

The interaction of high-intensity lasers with plasma is predicted to produce extreme quasi-static magnetic fields with magnitudes approaching Megatesla levels. In relativistically transparent plasmas, these fields can enhance direct laser acceleration and allow efficient gamma-ray emission by accelerated electrons. However, due to the so-called magnetic suppression effect, the magnetic field can also affect radiating electron trajectories and, thus, reduce the emission probability of the bremsstrahlung. This is the first study to examine the bremsstrahlung suppression mechanism in the context of high-intensity laser–plasma interactions. Our paper describes a new module that integrates the suppression effect into the standard bremsstrahlung module of the EPOCH particle-in-cell code by considering the impact of magnetic fields and extending the analysis to electric fields. We also investigate this suppressing mechanism's effect on the emitting electron's dynamics. Our findings show that this mechanism not only suppresses low-energy emissions but also has an impact on the dynamics of the radiating electrons.