An initial study and design on ignition elliptical hohlraum (ellipraum) is given by using the expended plasma-filling model with criterions. As a result, in an ellipraum with a smaller ratio of major-to-minor axis (a/b), the radius ratio of ellipraum-to-capsule (b/RC) should be larger (hence more sphere-like) to meet the criterions of plasma-filling and laser deposition, meanwhile the required laser energy and peak power are lower and the coupling between different modes is weaker. To produce a 300 eV radiation pulse to ignite a capsule of 1 mm radius, an ellipraum of a/b = 1.6 and b/Rc = 2.8 is superior to a cylinraum with a length-to-diameter ratio of 1.81 and a cylinraum-to-capsule radius ratio of 2.54 in saving more than 10% laser energy and reducing 50% coupling between different modes.

We present a 2D analysis of direct-drive shock ignition for the laser Megajoule. First, a target design is chosen in the HiPER-like target family generated by scale up and down of the original HiPER target. A first analysis is done considering the 1D fuel assembly and 2D shock ignition by means of the ring at polar angle of 33°2. The intensity profile is top-hat and calculations are done for several different radii. It is shown that larger the radius, lower the minimum spike power is. In addition, the intensity in each quad can stay below 4 × 1014 W/cm2 and is considered non crucial for parametric instabilities such as two plasmons. A 2D analysis of the fuel assembly is done in a second step by considering the two rings located at 49° and 59°5 and their symmetric by the equatorial plane symmetry. It is shown that low mode asymmetries are important at the stagnation and can significantly affect the areal density obtained. Finally, full 2D calculations of shock ignition is done, using all the beams of the LMJ and show that the spike power needed for ignition and gain is increased by a factor greater than 3 regarding the power needed in perfectly isotropic fuel assembly. This increase is mainly due to high level low mode asymmetries generated during fuel assembly.

Creation of a preformed plasma (preplasma) by heating laser prepulse is crucial to fast ignition. Because it is difficult to control the prepulse and preplasma, control of fast electron beam generation by low-density foam was recently reported. However, this simulation study ignored the foam preplasma. Therefore, we calculated foam preplasma formation using a hydrodynamic code and investigated the effects of the preplasma on fast ignition by using integrated simulations, including radiation hydrodynamic, Particle-In-Cell (PIC) and Fokker–Planck simulations. We conclude that the average core temperature decreased by approximately 10% in the integrated simulations of the foam preplasma case.

Experiments to study the light emission from plasma produced by particle beams are presented. Fundamental aspects in comparison with discharge plasma formation are discussed. It is shown that the formation of excimer molecules is an important process. This paper summarizes various studies of particle beam induced light emission and presents the first results of a direct comparison of light emission induced by electron- and ion beam excitation. Both high energy heavy ion beam and low energy electron beam experiments are described and an overview over applications in the form of light sources, lasers, and ionization devices is given.

This communication presents a comparison of two cases to study the process of laser beam propagation and Stimulated Brillouin Scattering (SBS) in laser plasma interaction. These two cases are, with imposing the restriction of paraxial approximation on the laser beam and, relaxing this restriction up to a certain extent. In this work, the study done by Sharma et al. (2009) using paraxial approximation is extended by taking contribution of the off-axial rays in the laser beam profile. The spitted profile of the laser beam is obtained due to uneven focusing of the off-axial rays and its effect on localization of the ion acoustic wave (IAW) has been studied. Including the off-axial part of the laser beam semi-analytical solution of the nonlinear coupled IAW equation has been found and this is examined that off-axial part affects background densities. The nonlinear coupling between the laser beam and IAW is severely affected by modified profile of the laser beam. Further, it is investigated that the SBS is also influenced by this coupling process. Therefore, the reflectivity of SBS has been compared with and without contribution of off-axial rays. A notable change is found in the magnitude of SBS reflectivity in modified-paraxial case in comparison to the paraxial case.

The results of experiments involving underwater electrical explosion of different wire arrays using an outer metallic cylinder as a shock reflector are presented. A pulse generator with a stored energy of about 6 kJ, current amplitude ≤ 500 kA, and rise time of 350 ns was used for the wire array explosion. The results of the experiments and of hydrodynamic simulations showed that in the case of a Cu wire array explosion, the addition of the reflector increases the pressure and temperature of the water in the vicinity of the implosion axis about 1.38 and about 1.33 times, respectively. Also, it was shown that in the case of an Al wire array explosion with stainless steel reflector, Al combustion results, and, accordingly, additional energy is delivered to the converging water flow generating about 540 GPa pressure in the vicinity of the explosion axis. Finally, it was found that microsecond time scale light emission that appears with microsecond time scale delay with respect to the nanosecond time scale self-light emission of the compressed water in the vicinity of the implosion axis is related to water bubbles formation which scattered light of exploded wires.

In this work, it is suggested that the ponderomotive force, induced by a multi-petawatt laser on the interface of a vacuum with solid target, can accelerate a micro-foil to relativistic velocities. The extremely high velocities of the micro-foil can be achieved due to the very short time duration (about a picosecond) of the laser pulse. This accelerated micro-foil is used to ignite a pre-compressed cylindrical shell containing the deuterium tritium fuel. The fast ignition is induced by a heat wave produced during the collision of the accelerated foil with the pre-compressed target. This approach has the advantage of separating geometrically the nanoseconds lasers that compress the target with the picosecond laser that accelerates the foil.

A fundamental different mechanism dominates laser interaction with picosecond-terawatt pulses in contrast to the thermal-pressure processes with ns pulses. At ps-interaction, the thermal effects are mostly diminished and the nonlinear (ponderomotive) forces convert laser energy instantly with nearly 100% efficiency into the space charge neutral electron cloud, whose motion is determined by the inertia of the attached ion cloud. These facts were realized only by steps in the past and are expressed by the ultrahigh plasma acceleration, which is more than few thousand times higher than observed by any thermokinetic mechanism. The subsequent application for side-on ignition of uncompressed fusion fuel by the ultrahigh accelerated plasma blocks is studied for the first time by using the genuine two-fluid hydrodynamics. Details of the shock-like flame propagation can be evaluated for the transition to ignition conditions at velocities near 2000 km/s for solid deuterium-tritium.

As the binary collision process requires much more computation time, a statistical electron-electron collision model based on modified Langevin equation is developed to reduce it. This collision model and a simple electron-ion scattering model are installed into one-dimensional PIC code, and collisional effects on fast electron generation and transport in fast ignition are investigated. In the collisional case, initially thermal electrons are heated up to a few hundred keV due to direct energy transfer by electron-electron collision, and they are also heated up to MeV by Joule heating induced by electron-ion scattering. Thus the number of low energy component of fast electrons increase than that in the collisionless case.

A comparative study of superficial changes on the superalloy Inconel 600, induced by a picosecond Nd:YAG laser operating at 1064, 532, and 266 nm, is presented. All of the laser wavelengths, as well as the used fluences of 2.5 (1064 nm), 4.3 (532 nm), and 0.6 J/cm2 (266 nm) were found to be adequate for inducing surface variations. Quite different surface features were produced depending on the laser wavelength used. The measured surface damage thresholds were 0.25, 0.13 and 0.10 J/cm2 for 1064, 532, and 266 nm, respectively. Drastic differences, in function of the wavelength used, were recorded for the crater depths, as well the appearance of hydrodynamic effects and periodic surface structures. Differences in crater depths were explained via an easier propagation of the first harmonic laser radiation (1064 nm) through the ejected material and plasma compared to a radiation at 532 and 266 nm. Finally, changes in the surface oxygen content caused by ultrashort laser pulses were considered.

Optical Thomson scattering has been implemented as a diagnostic of laser ablated plumes generated with second harmonic Nd:YAG laser radiation at 532 nm. Thomson scattering data with both spatial and temporal resolution has been collected, giving both electron density, and temperature distributions within the plume as a function of time. Although the spatial profiles do not match very well for simple models assuming either isothermal or isentropic expansion, consideration of the measured ablated mass indicates an isothermal expansion fits better than an isentropic expansion and indeed, at late time, the spatial profile of temperature is almost consistent with an isothermal approximation.

A detailed study of Wakefield excitation in very dense quantum plasma is presented. Electric and magnetic Wakefields have been obtained for a particular profile of the laser pulse, using perturbative technique involving orders of the incident laser beam. The Wakefields can trap electrons and accelerate them to extremely high energies. It is observed that the quantum effects significantly change the classical nature of the Wakefield. The axial and radial forces acting on a test electron due to the Wakefields have been evaluated.

Cyclotron resonance effects on electron acceleration by two lasers of different wavelengths in the presence of a magnetic field have been investigated. Beating of two high-intensity lasers of different wavelengths, propagating in opposite direction to each other, can produce a high accelerating field gradient. An electron can be accelerated by such accelerating field to a sufficiently higher energy level. Additional energy gain has been observed due to the applied magnetic field. The magnetic field turns down the electrons to the acceleration region to extract more energy from the accelerating field produced by the beating of the lasers. At resonance, when the Larmor frequency is comparable to the laser frequency, this effect becomes more pronounced. Using some reasonable experimental parameters, we estimate the electron energy gain for this mechanism.

We explore the feasibility of accelerating electron beams up to energies much beyond 1 TeV in a realistic scale and evolution of the beam qualities such as emittance and energy spread at the final beam energy on the order of 100 TeV, using the newly formulated coupled equations describing the beam dynamics and radiative damping of electrons. As an example, we present a design for a 100 TeV laser-plasma accelerator in the operating plasma density np = 1015 cm−3 and numerical solutions for evolution of the normalized emittance as well as their analytical solutions. We show that the betatron radiative damping causes very small normalized emittance that promises future applications for the high-energy frontier physics.

The goal of this theory is to study the conversion of a fraction of a laser beam to its phase-mismatch second and third harmonics. This conversion takes place by focusing an intense laser beam into a transversely magnetized plasma, as a nonlinear medium. The influence of the polarization field is considered, however, the plasma density is below the critical density. It has already been revealed that for dense plasma, the second and third harmonics efficiencies decreased with density increasing in the presence of a sufficiently strong magnetic field. This result is in contrast to the under dense and weakly magnetized plasma, which the harmonics efficiencies increased with density increasing. It is shown that the harmonics radiation cut-off, when the magnetic field increases up until the saturation strength Bsat. In addition, the results indicated that the average phase-mismatch third harmonic conversion efficiency is a little smaller than the phase-match case reported for non-magnetized plasma.

An intense electron-beam accelerator, which consists of a primary storage capacitor system, a magnetic core Tesla transformer, Blumlein pulse forming line of water dielectric, and a field-emission diode, are constructed and described. The experimental results show that the output voltage of transformer is more than 740 kV, the rise time is about 5 µs, the diode voltage is about 596 kV, electron beam current is about 60 kA, the duration is about 100 ns, and the power is 36 GW when charging voltage is 40 kV. It was suitable to drive magnetically insulated transmission line oscillator. And it can be also used in materials surface modification. This accelerator is very compact and works stably and reliably.

In order to improve the total laser-proton energy conversion efficiency, a nanobrush target is proposed for proton acceleration and investigated by two-dimensional particle-in-cell simulation. The simulation results show that the nanobrush target significantly enhances the energy and number of hot electrons through the target rear side. Compared with plain target, the sheath field on the rear surface is increased near 100% and the total laser-proton energy conversion efficiency is prompted more than 70%. Furthermore, the proton divergence angle is less than 30° by using nanobrush target. The proposed target may serve as a new method to increase the energy conversion efficiency from laser to protons.

Laser plasma experiments, which demonstrated the single order diffraction property of spectroscopic photon sieve (a novel single-order diffraction grating), were performed on the SILEX-I femto-second laser facility. High-intensity laser radiation was focused onto a Cu target to generate plasma. The spectra of soft X-ray from copper plasmas have been measured with spectroscopic photon sieve based spectrograph. The results show that the spectroscopic photon sieve is able to provide soft X-ray spectrum free from higher-order diffraction components. The measured spectra obtained with such a spectroscopic photon sieve need no unfolding process to extract higher-order diffraction interference.

Total electron emission yield for impact of slow Neq+(q = 2, 4, 6, 8) ions with various kinetic energy under normal incidence on n-type Si has been measured. It is shown that for the same charge state, the total electron yield γ increases linearly as the kinetic energy of projectile at impact increases, up to velocities corresponding to the “classical” threshold. Separation of kinetic electron yield γKE and potential electron yield γPE shows that γPE is proportional to the ion charge state and γKE increases linearly with projectile velocity. Finally, based on “single hole without hopping” hypothesis, the expression of the “CRF” F(q) is given, and the relation between γKE and q is obtained successfully for the first time, which is also a basis for judging whether the “trampoline effect” exists.

Arguments are discussed on how ion energy measurements from ultra-thin diamond irradiation with 45 fs laser pulses of 26 terawatt power may be related to the ultra-high acceleration of plasma blocks where the significance of the highly efficient direct conversion of laser radiation into mechanical motion of ions or plasma blocks is dominated by nonlinear (ponderomotive) forces in fundamental contrast to thermo-kinetic dominated interaction with ns laser pulses.