Strongly shocked cylindrically convergent implosions were conducted on the OMEGA laser. The directly driven targets consist of a low-density foam core and an embedded aluminum shell covered by an epoxy ablator. The outer surface of the aluminum shell has imposed single-mode perturbations with wave numbers k = 0.25, 0.7, 1.05, and 2.5 (rad/μm) and initial amplitudes η0 /λ = 0.04, 0.11, 0.33, and 0.4. In our convergent geometry, perturbation growth without evidence of saturation, for η/λ as large as 4.5 is observed for k < 1. For k > 1 growth rate scaling with wavenumber breaks down and transition to turbulence is suggested.

The dynamics of the expansion plasma produced by excimer laser ablation of a silicon target into oxygen and mixed O2/Ar atmosphere were studied by means of time-resolved imaging of the expanding plume. Experiments were performed in pure oxygen, ranging between 0.13 and 13.33 Pa, and at different O2/Ar ratios at a fixed total pressure of 13.33 Pa. The occurrence of a shock wave (SW) generated by the supersonic expansion of the plasma was observed at high pressure values. The presence of the SW had a strong influence on the structure of SiOx thin films. In fact, silicon dioxide thin films were always obtained in presence of the SW, irrespective of the oxygen content in the gaseous mixture. On the contrary, suboxide thin films were obtained when the expansion occurred at lower pressure values (no SW presence). The temperature rise following the developing of the SW, is supposed to enhance the oxygen molecules dissociation by increasing the efficiency of the silicon oxidation reaction.

In this paper the results of numerical computations of rippling smoothing basing on the broad-band laser irradiation method for the laser intensity range 1016−1017 W/cm2 and short-pulse (<10 ps) interaction with plasma are described.

Stochastic instabilities are studied considering the motion of one particle in a very high intensity wave perturbed by one or two low intensity traveling waves. Resonances are identified and conditions for resonance overlap are studied. PIC code simulation results confirm the stochastic heating.This paper was presented at the 28th ECLIM conference in Rome, Italy.

High gain free electron laser devices, operating in the self amplified spontaneous emission regime, are under construction and was designed as the next generation of synchrotron radiation sources. In this paper we discuss the relevant physical aspects and derive simple relations for laser and higher order harmonic power, which can usefully be exploited in the preliminary design of these sources

Some preliminary views are presented to the topic “Fast High Density Plasma Blocks Driven by Picosecond Terawatt Lasers” of the UWS-International Workshop 1–4 December 2004 in Sydney, Australia, underlining the motivation to explain the difference between the relativistic and the subrelativistic effects of ps-laser pulse interaction with plasma at powers above TW. This refers to specifically selected experimental and theoretical presentations at the workshop containing results for explaining the differences but also the important applications for studies on the fast ignitor scheme for application on nuclear fusion energy. One of the aims with relativistic proton beams is to realize conditions of spark ignition, while the subrelativistic case implies the generation of fast plasma blocks eventually with the possibility to ignite a fusion flame in uncompressed solid DT fuel for a power station with high efficiency.

A diffraction limited focal spot is used to create a single speckle in a preformed plasma. The single speckle, or hot spot, is the simplest irreducible element for studying laser plasma interactions. Using the single hot spot configuration, the nonlinear behavior of SRS driven Langmuir waves has been investigated in both a fluid dominated and a kinetic regime. A transition between the two regimes has been observed as a function of kλD where k is the Langmuir wave-number and λD is the Debye length.

Hydrodynamic instabilities play an important role in the target compression for inertial confinement fusion (ICF). We present the analytical solution of a perturbed isentropic implosion. We compare the analytical solution to the results obtained with perturbation and bi-dimensional Lagrangian hydrodynamic codes. We also compare results from bi-dimensional code and perturbation code on an ICF like test case.

Plasma-based accelerators have been proposed for the next generation of compact accelerators because of the huge electric fields they can support. However, it has been difficult to use them efficiently for applications because they produce poor quality particle beams with large energy spreads. Here, we demonstrate a dramatic enhancement in the quality of electron beams produced in laser-plasma interaction: an ultrashort laser pulse drives a plasma bubble which traps and accelerates plasma electrons to a single energy. This produces an extremely collimated and quasi-monoenergetic electron beam with a high charge of 0.5 nanocoulomb at energy 170 ± 20 MeV.

Laser matter interaction in the regime of super-intense and ultra-short laser pulses is discovering common interests and goals for plasma and elementary particles physics. Among them, the electron laser wakefield acceleration and the X/γ tunable sources, based on the Thomson scattering (TS) of optical photons on accelerated electrons, represent the most challenging applications. The activity of the Intense Laser Irradiation Laboratory in this field will be presented.

Irradiation of solid targets by short laser pulses can result in a production of fast ions. In this paper, two production modes are discussed: the controlled amount of matter mode (CAM) and the open amount of matter mode (OAM). The CAM mode is based on laser energy transfer to a controlled amount of matter before the target becomes transparent to the laser light due to the gas-dynamical expansion. For the CAM mode, it is presented a model that allows determining the target parameters, the focusing conditions, and the pulse duration as a function of the laser pulse energy, of the aimed energy per nucleon and of the energy transfer efficiency to the target. The conditions to be this mode experimentally addressed are indicated. The OAM mode relies on the irradiation of a target with large ion content by a short laser pulse; in this case, a small amount of fast ions is emitted from the rear and lateral sides of the target depending on the laser pulse and focusing parameters. For this mode, observed in several experiments, a theoretical discussion is presented. Special attention is devoted to the target normal sheath acceleration (TNSA) and to expansion wave (EW) mechanisms. The EW process is discussed in the framework of a two-temperature isothermal model and some peculiar hydrodynamic processes are discussed.

Studies of single-event laser-target interaction for fusion reaction schemes leading to volume ignition are discussed. Conditions were explored where single-event ns-laser pulses give rise to temperatures sufficient for volume ignition. Thus, ignition is possible, particularly if X-ray reabsorption is sufficiently high. Unfortunately, this scheme requires laser pulses with energies above 5 MJ and target densities of compressed DT above 1000 g/cm−3. Both requirements are quite demanding for near term systems. Nevertheless the present state technology and the detailed knowledge about volume ignition at direct drive are a basis. Systems as NIF or LMJ can well confirm these physics-clarified conditions and the technology for large laser systems with sufficient repetition rate and for a drastic reduction of the size and costs is necessary and possible and by physics similar to the known reductions in transistor development.

Experiments on laser ablation of metals in air, in vacuum, and in similar irradiation conditions, revealed that the ablation thresholds in air are up to three times lower than those measured in vacuum. Our analysis shows that this difference is caused by the existence of a long-lived transient non-equilibrium surface state at the solid-vacuum interface. The energy distribution of atoms at the surface is Maxwellian-like but with its high-energy tail truncated at the binding energy. We find that in vacuum the rate of energy transfer from the bulk to the surface layer to build the high-energy tail, which determines the lifetime of this non-equilibrium state, exceeds other characteristic timescales such as the surface cooling time. This prohibits thermal evaporation in vacuum for which the high-energy tail is essential. In air, however, collisions between the gas atoms and the surface markedly reduce the lifetime of this non-equilibrium surface state allowing thermal evaporation to proceed before the surface cools. It was experimentally observed that the difference between the ablation depth in vacuum and that in air disappears at the laser fluencies 2–3 times in excess of the vacuum threshold value. The material removal at this level of the deposited energy density attains the features of the non-equilibrium ablation similar for both cases. We find, therefore, that the threshold in vacuum corresponds to non-equilibrium ablation during the pulse, while thermal evaporation after the pulse is responsible for the lower ablation threshold observed in air. This paper provides direct experimental evidence of how the transient surface effects may strongly affect the onset and rate of a solid-gas phase transition.

Recently a new fast ignitor concept has been proposed by Velarde et al. (2003) that uses only one energy drive. In this concept, the ignition is induced by the collision of high velocity matter accelerated inside a conical guide. The first model used a jet produced by illuminating a conical shape with a laser or X-rays. On the other hand, in the shell impact concept, the compressed deuterium-tritium fuel is ignited by a separately imploded shell traveling in a guiding cone. In this article, we will study the first design, jet driven concept that have been developed during this year. We use for this work the Arwen code (Ogando & Velarde, 2001; Rendleman et al., 2000), with two-dimensional (2D) multi-group radiation transport. The main parameter is to analyze the specific power transmitted to the target during the collision. Problems with the designs are the guide integrity during the collapse, the radiation preheating, and the average efficiency of the process, etc. which we will address as well.

The studies of laser ablation have lead to a new theory of nuclei, endothermic nuclei generation, and quark-gluon plasmas. The surface of ablated plasma expanding into vacuum after high power laser irradiation of targets contains an electric double layer having the thickness of the Debye length. This led to the discovery of surface tension in plasmas, and led to the internal dynamic electric fields in all inhomogeneous plasmas. The surface tension causes stabilization by short length surface wave smoothing the expanding plasma plume and to stabilization against the Rayleigh–Taylor instability. Generalizing this to the degenerate electrons in a metal with the Fermi energy instead of the temperature resulted in the first quantum theory of surface tension of metals in agreement with measurements. Taking the Fermi energy in the Debye length for nucleons results in a theory of nuclei with stable confinement of protons and neutrons just at the well-known nuclear density, and the Debye lengths equal to the Hofstadter decay of the nuclear surface. Increasing the nuclear density by a factor of 10 leads to a change of the Fermi energy into its relativistic branch where no surface energy is possible and the particle mass is not defined, permitting the quark gluon plasma. Expansion of this higher density at the big bang or in super-nova results in nucleation and element generation. The Boltzmann equilibrium permits the synthesis of nuclei even in the endothermic range, however with the limit to about uranium. A relation for the magic numbers leads to a quark structure of nuclear shells that can be understood as a duality property of nuclei with respect to nucleons and quarks

Patterns of absorption and reflection of an ultrashort laser pulse by plasma with a solid-state density, which are realized in the mode of the normal skin effect, are studied. If the pulse power is so high to provide the electron heating during the time shorter than the reciprocal fundamental frequency, a nonlinear suppression of absorption takes place and the spectrum of the reflected radiation contains odd harmonics of the fundamental frequency.

Intense heavy ion beams from the Gesellschaft für Schwerionenforschung (GSI, Darmstadt, Germany) accelerator facilities, together with two high energy laser systems: petawatt high energy laser for ion experiments (PHELIX) and nanosecond high energy laser for ion experiments (NHELIX) are a unique combination to facilitate pioneering beam-plasma interaction experiments, to generate and probe high-energy-density (HED) matter and to address basic physics issues associated with heavy ion driven inertial confinement fusion. In one class of experiments, the laser will be used to generate plasma and the ion beam will be used to study the energy loss of energetic ions in ionized matter, and to probe the physical state of the laser-generated plasma. In another class of experiments, the intense heavy ion beam will be employed to create a sample of HED matter and the laser beam, together with other diagnostic tools, will be used to explore the properties of these exotic states of matter. The existing heavy ion synchrotron facility, SIS18, deliver an intense uranium beam that deposit about 1 kJ/g specific energy in solid matter. Using this beam, experiments have recently been performed where solid lead foils had been heated and a brightness temperature on the order of 5000 K was measured, using a fast multi-channel pyrometer that has been developed jointly by GSI and IPCP Chernogolovka. It is expected that the future heavy ion facility, facility for antiprotons and ion research (FAIR) will provide compressed beam pulses with an intensity that exceeds the current beam intensities by three orders of magnitude. This will open up the possibility to explore the thermophysical and transport properties of HED matter in a regime that is very difficult to access using the traditional methods of shock compression. Beam plasma interaction experiments using dense plasmas with a Γ-parameter between 0.5 and 1.5 have also been carried out. This dense Ar-plasma was generated by explosively driven shockwaves and showed enhanced energy loss for Xe and Ar ions in the energy range between 5.9 to 11.4 MeV.

The measurement of very narrow high density plasma blocks of high ion energy from targets irradiated with ps-TW laser pulses based on a new skin depth interaction process is an ideal tool for application of ion implantation in materials, especially of silicon, GaAs, or conducting polymers, for micro-electronics as well as for low cost solar cells. A further application is for ion sources in accelerators with most specifications of many orders of magnitudes advances against classical ion sources. We report on near band gap generation of defects by implantation of ions as measured by optical absorption spectra. A further connection is given for studying the particle beam transforming of n-type semiconductors into p-type and vice versa as known from sub-threshold particle beams. The advantage consists in the use of avoiding aggressive or rare chemical materials when using the beam techniques for industrial applications.

Interactions of sub-nanosecond pulses of kJ-class iodine laser “PALS” with low-density foams and acceleration of Al foils by the pressure of the heated foam matter are investigated here, both experimentally and theoretically. X-ray streak camera is used for evaluation of the speed of energy transfer through the porous foam material. The shock-wave arrival on the rear side of the target is monitored by optical streak camera. Accelerated foil velocities, measured by three-frame optical interferometers, and shadowgraphs, reach up to 107 cm/s. The accelerated foil shape is smooth without any signature of small-scale structures present in the incident laser beam. Conversion efficiencies as high as 14% of the laser energy into the kinetic energy of Al foil are derived. Experimental results compare well with our two-dimensional hydrodynamics simulations and with an approximate analytical model.

The Prague Asterix Laser System (PALS) research program covers a broad spectrum of laser–plasma experiments in the range of power densities of 1014-5 × 1016 W/cm2, aimed at development and applications of laser plasma-based ion and soft X-ray sources of plasma based ultra-bright XUV lasers in particular. In parallel to these two main lines of research, various principal tasks of laser plasma physics are being studied, such as generation and propagation of laser-induced shock waves, laser ablation, and crater creation processes or laser imprint treatment. Results selected of numerous experimental projects performed at PALS within the period 2002–2004 are surveyed in the paper, experiments with intense soft XUV laser beams being highlighted on the first place.