Ablation driven by hot electrons in shock ignition

An analytical model for the ablation driven by hot electrons is developed. The hot electrons are assumed to carry on the totality of the absorbed laser energy. Efficient energy coupling requires to keep the critical surface sufficiently close to the ablation front. To achieve this goal for high laser intensities a short enough laser wavelength is required. Scaling laws for the ablation pressure and the other relevant magnitudes of the ablation cloud are found in terms of the laser and target parameters.