On behalf of all at High Power Laser Science and Engineering we would like to congratulate the team at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL) on demonstrating fusion ignition at the National Ignition Facility. This major scientific achievement was realized on the 5 December 2022 at the LLNL and announced at a press briefing on the 13 December 2022 by the United States Department of Energy’s National Nuclear Security Administration. This was a historic milestone and the culmination of decades of effort.

Fusion energy research is delivering impressive new results emerging from different infrastructures and industrial devices evolving rapidly from ideas to proof-of-principle demonstration and aiming at the conceptual design of reactors for the production of electricity. A major milestone has recently been announced in laser fusion by the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory and is giving new thrust to laser-fusion energy research worldwide. Here we discuss how these circumstances strongly suggest the need for a European intermediate-energy facility dedicated to the physics and technology of laser-fusion ignition, the physics of fusion materials and advanced technologies for high-repetition-rate, high-average-power broadband lasers. We believe that the participation of the broader scientific community and the increased engagement of industry, in partnership with research and academic institutions, make most timely the construction of this infrastructure of extreme scientific attractiveness.

Astrophysical collisionless shocks are amazing phenomena in space and astrophysical plasmas, where supersonic flows generate electromagnetic fields through instabilities and particles can be accelerated to high energy cosmic rays. Until now, understanding these micro-processes is still a challenge despite rich astrophysical observation data have been obtained. Laboratory astrophysics, a new route to study the astrophysics, allows us to investigate them at similar extreme physical conditions in laboratory. Here we will review the recent progress of the collisionless shock experiments performed at SG-II laser facility in China. The evolution of the electrostatic shocks and Weibel-type/filamentation instabilities are observed. Inspired by the configurations of the counter-streaming plasma flows, we also carry out a novel plasma collider to generate energetic neutrons relevant to the astrophysical nuclear reactions.

The interactions of strong-field few-cycle laser pulses with metastable states of noble gas atoms are examined. Metastable noble gas atoms offer a combination of low ionization potential and a relatively simple atomic structure, making them excellent targets for examining ionization dynamics in varying experimental conditions. A review of the current work performed on metastable noble gas atoms is presented.

We present the workflow of the design, realization and testing of deformable mirrors suitable for high power diode pumped solid-state lasers. It starts with the study of the aberration to be corrected, and then it continues with the design of the actuators position and characteristic. In this paper, we present and compare three deformable mirrors realized for multi-J level laser facilities. We show that with the same design concept it is possible to realize deformable mirrors for other types of lasers. As an example, we report the realization of a deformable mirror for femtosecond lasers and for a CW $\text{CO}_{2}$ laser.

The use of ultra-high intensity laser beams to achieve extreme material states in the laboratory has become almost routine with the development of the petawatt laser. Petawatt class lasers have been constructed for specific research activities, including particle acceleration, inertial confinement fusion and radiation therapy, and for secondary source generation (x-rays, electrons, protons, neutrons and ions). They are also now routinely coupled, and synchronized, to other large scale facilities including megajoule scale lasers, ion and electron accelerators, x-ray sources and z-pinches. The authors of this paper have tried to compile a comprehensive overview of the current status of petawatt class lasers worldwide. The definition of ‘petawatt class’ in this context is a laser that delivers ${>}200~\text{TW}$.

The Atomic Weapons Establishment (AWE) is tasked with supporting Continuous At Sea Deterrence (CASD) by certifying the performance and safety of the national deterrent in the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty (CTBT) era. This means that recourse to further underground testing is not possible, and certification must be achieved by supplementing the historical data with the use of computer calculation. In order to facilitate this, AWE operates some of the largest supercomputers in the UK. To validate the computer codes, and indeed the designers who are using them, it is necessary to carry out further experiments in the right regimes. An excellent way to meet many of the requirements for material property data and to provide confidence in the validity of the algorithms is through experiments carried out on high power laser facilities.

This paper reviews the different challenges that are encountered in the delivery of high power lasers as drivers for fusion energy. We will focus on diode-pumped solid-state lasers and we will highlight some of the main recent achievements when using ytterbium, cryogenic cooling and ceramic gain media. Apart from some existing fusion facilities and some military applications of diode-pumped solid-state lasers, we will show that diode-pumped solid-state lasers are scalable to inertial fusion energy (IFE)’s facility level and that the all-fiber laser scheme is very promising.

New extensions of the chirped pulse amplification (CPA) scheme designed specially for petawatt Ti:Sapphire lasers are considered. The two new schemes support a spectral bandwidth sufficient for 20 fs pulses and a temporal contrast of 1012. The Double CPA scheme consists of two CPA stages with an intermediate temporal pulse filtering for temporal contrast improvement. The scheme of Negative–Positive CPA amplification takes advantage of consecutive saturated amplification of down chirped and up chirped pulses. This allows a suppress imprint of gain narrowing, which usually limits the spectral bandwidth at the multi-terawatt power level, and reach the bandwidth in excess of 50 nm without using any direct spectral shaping of the pulse.

A Nd:YAG laser oscillator Q-switched and mode locked via a nonlinear mirror based on stimulated Brillouin scattering (SBS) and aided by an acousto optical modulator (AOM) has been realised. A rate equation model and a round trip model are used to describe the longitudinal mode dynamics. Parameter variations of the nonlinear SBS mirror and the loss modulating AOM in the resonator are investigated with regard to their effect on the pulse duration and spectra of the pulses.