Nearly ten years ago, a research program concerning materials and technologies was defined to develop the very complex cryogenic target for obtaining the combustion of a deuterium-tritium mixture by inertial confinement fusion in the laser megajoule facility. The CEA target fabrication project includes research and development on various organic polymers and materials for the cryogenic laser megajoule target assembly as well as for other targets that can be useful for the fusion program (pre and post-ignition). Recent advances have been accomplished concerning the development of specific organic materials for the fabrication of targets components, including the synthesis of polymers for the laser megajoule microshells and metal-doped organic foams for the elaboration of doped-foam microshells or for the micromachining of components.

The dynamics of a charged particle in a relativistic strong electromagnetic plane wave propagating in a nonmagnetized medium is studied first. The problem is shown to be integrable when the wave propagates in vacuum. When it propagates in plasma, and when the full plasma response is considered, an exhaustive numerical work allows us to conclude that the problem is not integrable. The dynamics of a charged particle in a relativistic strong electromagnetic plane wave propagating along a constant homogeneous magnetic field is studied next. The problem is integrable when the wave propagates in vacuum. When it propagates in plasma, the problem becomes nonintegrable. Finally, one particle in a high intensity wave, propagating in a nonmagnetized medium, perturbed by a low intensity traveling wave is considered. Resonances are identified and conditions for resonance overlap are studied. Stochastic acceleration is shown by considering a single particle. It is confirmed in plasma in realistic situations with particle-in-cell code simulations.

Electron injection into a laser wakefield by the colliding of two circularly polarized laser pulses is analyzed by the Hamiltonian approach and particle-in-cell simulations. If the pump pulse driving the laser wakefield is right-circularly-polarized, electron injection is found only when the counter-propagating injection pulse is left-circularly-polarized and vice versa. This holds when the injection pulse is at low intensity and has a frequency near the pump pulse frequency ω0. For a moderately intense injection pulse, even if the two pulses have the same polarization, electron injection is found but with less efficiency. It is also found that the injection pulse with the frequency within [0.5ω0,3ω0] can still create electron injection efficiently provided it has the opposite polarization with the pump pulse.

Propagation of an intense laser pulse in plasma with a periodically modulated density is considered using envelope equations. The laser induces modifications of the plasma refractive index via relativistic and ponderomotive nonlinearities. In the region of high plasma density, the self focusing effect of nonlinearity suppresses the diffraction divergence, and the laser converges. As the beam enters into the low density region, the diffraction tends to diverge it offsetting the convergence due to the curvature it has acquired. For a given set of plasma parameters, there is a critical power of the laser above which it propagates in a periodically focused manner. Below this power the laser undergoes overall divergence. At substantially higher powers, the laser beam continues to converge until the saturation effect of nonlinearity suppresses the self focusing and diffraction predominates. The effect of density ripple is to cause overall increase in the self focusing length. The minimum spot size decreases with the wave number of the ripple.

We present the idea of intensified attosecond X-ray generation based on nonlinear Thomson backscattering of an intense laser pulse by electrons trapped in plasma-vacuum boundary. Two frequency up-conversions due to the relativistic Doppler effect and longitudinal γ-spike effect are analyzed, respectively, where γ is the relativistic factor of the plasma surface. Relativistic resonance heating conditions should be used as a criterion for the experimental design to obtain efficient high-order harmonics and energetic electrons' generation at relatively low laser intensities. Shaping the laser field by proposing a detuned second-harmonic can generate a single attosecond pulse without spectral filtering.

Controlled fusion energy from burning hydrogen with boron-11 is of interest because no neutrons are produced. Following the scheme of ignition by spherical irradiation by laser or particle beams, one has to deal with exorbitant conditions of densities and input energies. A new approach following the scheme of block ignition with laser pulses of picosecond (ps) duration and more than petawatt (PW) power led to the possibility of plane geometry irradiation of the fuel using the anomalous effect of block ignition for deuterium tritium (DT) based on updated conditions for the initial computations. We present the extension for H-11B resulting in a very less dramatic difference to DT than in the case of spherical pellet geometry. Ignition thresholds may be only about one order of magnitude higher and the needed temperatures of about 50 keV are no problem for the skin layer acceleration by nonlinear forces (SLANF) for the block generation.

The X-ray emission, especially the K-shell emission, from a neon gas-puff Z-pinch powered by the Qiang Guang-I accelerator, about 1.5 MA in amplitude and 100 ns in rise time, were calculated based on the two-level model and measured with X-ray diodes and an eight-frame X-ray pinhole camera. The simulation results showed that the K-shell yield is highly sensitive to the peak current. The experimental results confirmed that the matching of the Z-pinch load (mass and initial radius) to the current is crucial for getting a higher X-ray yield. Being determined by the imploding time, the pinch current plays a more important role than the current amplitude in K-shell emission. It seems that the preferable imploding time is about 110 ns. The K-shell radiation power with double shells, as a whole, is higher than that using single neon shell. While an implosion of a light (32 µg/cm) and small (20 mm in diameter) neon shell evolves with rather twist and asymmetries, a heavier (41 µg/cm) and bigger (25 mm in diameter) neon shell implodes more symmetrically. The double neon shells, 30 mm and 30 µg/cm for the outer shell, and 15-mm and 10 µg/cm for the inner shell, create almost “perfect” implosions evidenced by the early-time plasma shells with little perturbation and late stagnated pinch liners with a good axial uniformity. It was found that the “Zippering” effect leads to an earlier K-shell emission in the cathode region than that in the anode region, which extends the pulse width of K-shell emission.

Linear transformer driver (LTD) technology is actively developed at the Institute of High Current Electronics in Tomsk, Russia. This technology is being examined for use in high current high voltage pulsed accelerators. Recent development of high voltage low inductance capacitors and low inductance switches enabled to achieve ~100 ns rise time of the LTD output pulse. This technique allows one to eliminate intermediate pulse forming sections, used in the present accelerator technology, which would keep the footprint of an LTD accelerator small. LTD based drivers are currently considered for many applications, including future very high current Z-pinch drivers for inertial confinement fusion, medium current drivers with adjustable pulse length for isentropic compression experiments, and finally relatively low current accelerators for radiography and X-pinches. In this article, we present the design and test results for a new LTD stage, that operates at 100 kV charging voltage. Current amplitude up to 850 kA with ~140 ns rise time was obtained on a 0.05 Ω load. Stack of the LTD stages can be easily assembled in series or in parallel, thus providing voltage or current multiplication, respectively. Design of multi-mega-volt and multi-mega-ampere generators becomes straightforward with the LTD technology.

This paper presents three–dimensional numerical simulations of thermodynamic and hydrodynamic response of a wheel shaped solid graphite production target for the super conducting fragment separator (Super–FRS) that is irradiated with a fast extracted high intensity uranium beam. These fragment separator experiments will be carried out at the future Facility for Antiprotons and Ion Research (FAIR), at Darmstadt. Previously, we reported simulation results that were carried out using two–dimensional computer codes which showed that one can use a solid graphite target for the Super-FRS for the highest intensity (5 × 1011 ions per spill) of the fast extracted uranium beam. Present results, however, have shown that due to three–dimensional effects the maximum intensity that can be used with such a target is 3 × 1011 ions per spill. A detailed comparison between two–dimensional and three–dimensional results is presented in this paper.

The high energy loss of heavy ions in matter as well as the small angular scattering makes heavy ion beams an excellent tool to produce almost cylindrical and homogeneously excited volumes in matter. This aspect can be used to pump short wavelength lasers. For the first time, a beam of heavy ions was used to pump a short wavelength gas laser in an experiment performed at the GSI ion accelerator facility in December 2005. In this experiment, the well-known KrF* excimer laser was pumped with an intense uranium beam. Pulses of an uranium beam compressed down to 110 ns (full width at half maximum) with initial particle energy of 250 MeV per nucleon were stopped inside a gas laser cell. A mixture of an excimer laser premix gas (95.5%Kr + 0.5%F2) and a buffer gas (Ar) in different proportions was used as the laser gas. The maximum beam intensity reached in the experiment was 2.5 × 109 particles per pulse, which resulted in 34 J/g specific energy deposited in the laser gas. The laser effect on the transition at λ = 248 nm has been successfully demonstrated by various independent methods. There, the laser threshold was reached with a beam intensity of 1.2 × 109 particles per pulse, and the energy of the laser pulse of about 2 mJ was measured for an ion beam intensity of 2 × 109 particles per pulse. As a next step, it is planned to reduce the laser wavelength down to the vacuum ultraviolet spectral region, and to proceed to the excimer lasers of the pure rare gases. The perspectives for such experiments are discussed and the detailed estimations for Xe and Kr cases are given. We believe that the use of heavy ion beams as a pumping source may lead to new pumping schemes on the higher lying level transitions and considerably shorter wavelengths, which rely on the high cross sections for multiple ionization of the target species.

Anomalous interaction of picosecond laser pulses of terawatt to petawatt power is due to suppression of relativistic self-focusing if prepulses are cut-off by a contrast ratio higher than 108, resulting in quasi-neutral directed plasma blocks with deuterium tritium ion current densities above 1011 A/cm2. This is still not high enough for ignition of solid-state density deuterium tritium because the energy flux density E* has to be higher than the threshold of 4 ×108 J/cm2 obtained within the theory of Chu (1972). A revision of this evaluation shows a reduction of this threshold by a factor 20 if the later discovered inhibition factors for thermal conduction because of double layer effects as well as the shorter stopping lengths of the alpha particles due to collective effects are taken into account. Under these relaxed conditions, the parameters of nonlinear force generated blocks of dielectrically increased thickness for deuterium tritium ignition with directed ions of energies near the 80 keV resonances are discussed.

A simple theoretical model is proposed for the interaction between two counter-propagating laser pulses (a pump and a seed pulse) in unmagnetized plasma. Pulse compression and amplification are observed via numerical simulation. A one dimensional fluid model for stimulated Raman backscattering is proposed to investigate the pulse compression and pulse amplification mechanisms. To accomplish this, energy is transferred from the long pump pulse to a seed pulse, with a Langmuir plasma wave mediating the transfer. The study focuses on the intensity profile of the pump laser pulse. A Gaussian and a ring intensity profile are, separately, considered for the pump laser pulse.

We present the temporal and spatial characterization of X-ray sources (at ~1 keV) driven by a 200 TW, 30 fs, 800 nm laser pulse on SILEX-I laser facility at Research Center of Laser Fusion. For laser copper foil interaction with laser intensity between 6 × 1018 W/cm2 and 3 × 1019 W/cm2, the X-ray images show cone-like jet structures. While the yield of X-rays is strongly dependent on the laser intensity, the plasma expansion length is weakly dependent on the laser intensity, and the open angle of the cone-like jet is not correlated to the laser intensity. The formation of the jet structure is attributed to the plasma transverse confine by the self-induced quasi-static magnetic field. An X-ray pedestal 4 ns preceding the main pulse was observed. The correlation between X-ray pedestal and collimated proton beam generation was found.

Electron acceleration in the plasma wakefield driven by asymmetric laser pulses is investigated analytically. It is found that the asymmetric laser pulse can significantly modify the phase portrait of the electron dynamics and enhance the maximum energy of the accelerated electrons. There exists an optimum ratio of the lengths of the rising and falling segments of the asymmetric laser-pulse. A linear scaling law relating the accelerated electrons' energy and the plasma density is obtained. This result differs from the power-law dependence often associated with symmetric laser pulses.

The minimum irradiance needed to overcome amplified spontaneous emission (ASE) of a seed beam injected into a laser amplifier is evaluated. The treatment is particularly applicable to extreme ultraviolet (EUV) and X-ray laser schemes to inject laser harmonic radiation as a seed into (1) plasma laser amplifiers and (2) free-electron lasers. Simple expressions and calculations are given for the minimum injected irradiance required for amplification of the injected seed beam to exceed ASE from the amplifier, including the effects of gain saturation, assuming one dimensional radiative transfer.

In this work, we introduce a new ellipsoid model to describe bubble acceleration of electrons and discuss the required conditions of forming it. We have found that the electron trajectory is strongly related to background electron energy and cavity potential ratio. In the ellipsoid cavity regime, the quality of the electron beam is improved in contrast to other methods, such as that using periodic plasma wakefield, spherical cavity regime, and plasma channel guided acceleration. The trajectory of the electron motion can be described as hyperbola, parabola, or ellipsoid path. It is influenced by the position and energy of the electrons and the electrostatic potential of the cavity. In the experimental part of this work, a 20 TW power and 30 fs laser pulse was focused on a pulsed He gas jet. We have focused the laser pulse in the best matched point above the nozzle gas to obtain a stable ellipsoid bubble. The finding of the optimum points will be described in analytical details.

In the present paper, we have investigated the growth of a Gaussian perturbation superimposed on a Gaussian laser beam. The nonlinearity we have considered is of relativistic type. We have setup the nonlinear differential equations for beam width parameter of the main beam, growth and width of the laser spike by using the WKB and paraxial ray approximation. These are coupled ordinary differential equations and therefore these are simultaneously solved numerically using the Runge Kutta method. It has been observed from the analysis that self-focusing/defocusing of the main beam and the spike determine the growth dynamic of the spike.