The ultrafast motions of electrons and nuclei in atoms and molecules play a crucial role in describing their interaction with matter and light. These motions occur over timescales ranging from picoseconds for nuclei to attoseconds for electrons. In many applications, ultrashort pulses are necessary to initiate and investigate specific motions of electrons and nuclei through a pump-probe scheme. Femtosecond pulses in the violet and ultraviolet spectral range are essential for a wide range of applications in fields such as physics, chemistry, biology, and materials science. Time-resolved violet and ultraviolet spectroscopy with sub-hundred femtosecond pulses provides access to processes involving nuclear motions in chemical reactions and biological phenomena. Even shorter pulses are highly desired for observing and controlling fast electron and nuclear motions in the sub-10 fs regime. However, the violet and ultraviolet pulse duration in low-order harmonic generation is limited by the bandwidths of the near-infrared fundamental pulses, which generally support pulse durations of only tens of femtoseconds.

The interaction of high-intensity laser pulses with solid targets results in the generation of secondary radiation including beams of energetic ions suitable for many applications. Depending on the particular mechanism, the laser-driven ion acceleration is generally very sensitive to the target conditions at the moment of the main pulse arrival. The scale length, density, spatial distribution of preplasma and the time of its generation (with respect to the main pulse arrival) on both target's surfaces influence the laser absorption, electric and magnetic field generation and subsequent ion acceleration. The observation of the target condition close to the interaction is therefore beneficial for understanding the plasma parameters and reaching desired acceleration mechanisms. Conventional optical probing based on the pump-probe method usually records a single image of the interaction in a particular shot at a specific time. Repeated measurements with the different time delays between the probe and the pump then provide the preplasma dynamics relying on accurate reproducibility and potentially a high occurrence rate of the laser-target interaction. Although there is a variety of single-shot multi-frame probing techniques, they usually work with probes at fundamental or harmonic frequencies. However, pump pulse scattering and plasma self-emission, which is dominantly generated at these frequencies, often saturate the detector and cover the information carried by the probe beams. The utilization of off-harmonic probes generated by stand-alone laser systems is limited due to the need for precise synchronization with the pump at sub-ps level. Ideally, several time-delayed probe pulses with off-harmonic frequencies that are inherently synchronized with the pump pulse should propagate through the laser-target interaction just before the main pulse arrival to reveal any preplasma effects.

High energy, high average power, pulsed lasers produce a lot of heat in the gain medium, and this heat is one of the main sources of degradation in output beam quality. The heat creates temperature gradients that consequently generate substantial mechanical stresses, which can cause optically isotropic material to become optically anisotropic. This effect is called thermal-stress-induced birefringence, and its parameters vary across the optical aperture, thus affecting the beam polarization non-uniformly across its cross-section. This polarization change is not always immediately visible, unless the beam propagates through a specific type of polarization-sensitive device, such as a polarizer, or is used in a polarization-sensitive process, such as harmonic frequency conversion. The amount of energy in an unwanted polarization state can reach up to 50%, significantly decreasing the overall efficiency of any conversion process.

High power lasers are on the verge of creating a new quantum electrodynamic (QED) plasma state in the laboratory. Multi-petawatt laser facilities coming online can produce focused light intensities exceeding 1023 Wcm-2. At these extreme intensities, the plasma dynamics are dominated by feedback between strong field QED and classical plasma processes. The plasma electrons accelerated in the laser-plasma interaction of this type radiate a significant fraction of their energy as an extremely bright flash of gamma-ray photons, produced by synchrotron emission in the ultraintense laser fields. This can result in other strong field phenomena such as radiation reaction, relativistic anomalous opacity and multi-photon electron–positron pair generation. In addition to the exploration of high field plasma physics, there is also interest in developing this approach as a compact source of ultra-bright gamma-rays for a range of other fundamental researches, including particle physics, laboratory astrophysics and nuclear physics.

Machine learning and object detection networks have become powerful tools in computer vision and image processing, with numerous applications in fields such as autonomous vehicles, surveillance, and robotics. They can also offer a potential solution to many challenges faced in high-power laser experiments due to the fast development and increasing need for high-repetition-rate operation capabilities in laser systems and plasma targetry, enabling statistical methods that require a large number of shots. This study presents several applications of object detection networks in a high-power laser system with a peak power reaching the petawatt level and repetition rate at the hertz level, while laser systems with similar specs are emerging worldwide in the past few years. The study discusses the benefits of object detection networks and their use in computer vision specifically in the context of laser plasma diagnostics and laser damage detection. The paper provides several examples of successful applications of object detection networks in these areas, focusing on exploring online and offline analysis of diagnostic data in a high-power laser-plasma experiment. The study concludes by highlighting the potential for further research and development in this area, which could lead to even more advanced and sophisticated applications of object detection networks in laser systems. Recently, this paper was published in High Power Laser Science and Engineering , Vol. 11, Issue,1 (Jinpu Lin, Florian Haberstroh, Stefan Karsch, Andreas Döpp. Applications of object detection networks in high-power laser systems and experiments[J]. High Power Laser Science and Engineering, 2023, 11(1): 010000e7).

Laser-induced particle acceleration attracts the interest of the scientific community due to its numerous potential applications in inertial confinement fusion, medical applications such as hadron therapy, as well as due to the fundamental physics involved. An experimental team from the Institute of Plasma Physics & Lasers (IPPL) of the Hellenic Mediterranean University – HMU focuses on the experimental production of the optimal target profiles to be irradiated by the ZEUS laser to deliver accelerated protons having the maximum energy and population possible.

Chirped-pulse amplification (CPA) technology has been significantly advancing the development of ultra-short and ultra-intense laser. Several laser facilities aiming at 10 PW-level output power are built or under construction, such as ELI, Vulcan-10 PW, Apollon-10 PW, and SULF-10 PW, which will create unprecedented extreme physical conditions in the lab and strongly motivate the studies of laser-driven particle acceleration, x/gamma ray radiation, laboratory astrophysics, laser-driven nuclear physics etc.

Before the reported work, the reported world-record power for laser pulses was 4.9 PW (Zeng et al. in Opt. Lett. 42, 2014 (2017)) and 4.2 PW (Sung et al. in Opt. Lett. 42(11), 2058 (2017)). The presented demonstration is doubling the peak power record, showing the production and propagation to an experimental area of the record-breaking 10 PW peak power pulses at the Extreme Light Infrastructure – Nuclear Physics (ELI-NP), in Romania. These unprecedented power levels provide a solid foundation to perform the experimental investigation in fundamental and applied research, from nuclear physics and non-linear quantum electrodynamics to space science and medical applications.

The research fields related to noncontact positioning and transport of the free-standing cryogenic targets for inertial confinement fusion (ICF) applications are rapidly expanding. The operational principle behind these technologies is the magnetic acceleration of the levitating target carrier (or sabot) made from Type-II, high-temperature superconductors (HTSC). This is an alternative approach to ICF target delivery in comparison with conventional ones (such as pneumatic, electromagnetic, electrostatic injector concepts, etc.), which are useful for initial demonstrations, but advanced noncontact accelerator is desirable in the long run. Advantages here are the noncontact transport and thus the lack of wear and mechanical friction. This increases efficiency and reduces the maintenance cost that prolongs the service life of the target delivery system especially for its operation under high-rep-rate conditions.

Laser-plasma accelerators (LPA) have great potential to drive a new generation of free-electron lasers (FELs), as shown in fig. 1, which enables acceleration by multi-GeV energies in centimeter-scale plasmas and could drastically reduce the size, costs and complexity of the future FEL facilities. The first demonstration of plasma-driven FEL gain was reported in China, representing a major milestone for the field in 2020. Two-color x-ray FELs have great application value in ultra-fast field such as pump-probe and nonlinear wave mixing, which are usually realized on the conventional RF-based accelerator. Limited by the performance of the plasma-driven beam, x-ray FEL is difficult for realization. As for the plasma-driven two-color FEL, these is a research blank both in theory and experiment.

Ultra-intense lasers are enabling scientists to reach new regimes for transformational scientific discovery. Shortly after the laser was invented 60 years ago, scientists saw the potential for producing very bright beams of light. In particular, the high spatial coherence of the lasers enables them to be tightly focused in space. Later, scientists developed broadband lasers with high spectral coherence, enabling pulses to be formed that had very short durations. In the mid-1980s, the invention of chirped-pulse amplification enabled researchers to produce high-energy pulses that can be focused to very high intensities. For this "groundbreaking invention," the inventors were awarded the 2018 Nobel Prize in Physics.

Bright X/γ radiation sources have many applications in several fields, such as studying nuclear structure and physical phenomena, discovering new particles, ultra-high density flaw detection, generating high-flux positron and negative electron pairs, nuclear medical imaging, etc. Laser-plasma-based X/γ-photon sources have attracted extensive attention because of their compact size, relatively low cost, high beam brilliance and high photon energy.

A large team of UK based scientists has gathered to document the history of high-powered lasers in the UK. The review was initiated as a celebration of the 60th anniversary of the first demonstration of the laser by Theodore Maiman in 1960. From the earliest days, UK academia, industry, national laboratories, and defence communities started to develop these systems for a broad range of applications.

In recent years, the plasma wakefield acceleration driven by ultra-short and ultra-intense laser pulses has become increasingly mature, which can produce electron beams with ultra-high beam density and femtosecond beam duration; By using this electron beam, a new table-top radiation light source with collimation, ultrafast and high brightness can be produced. Compared with large synchrotron radiation light source, the radiation light source based on laser wakefield acceleration has the characteristics of femtosecond pulse duration, small source size, and high photon energy. In particular, the natural synchronization between X-ray pulse and driving laser pulse has incomparable advantages in the research of ultra-fast pump detection.

The pursue for high peak power is driven by the uncharted territory of knowledge that this may unlock, from basic science to applied one. The optical path towards these phenomenal powers may be one of the natural ones when we observe the critical role that the light is playing in the universe.

Ultrashort and broadband laser sources are formidable tools for a wide range of scientific areas. In the field of ultrafast science, laser pulses lasting only a few optical cycles are used to generate secondary sources employed in probing matter at atomic scales. Such sources are also widely adopted in applications in ultrafast spectroscopy, pump-probe in chemistry, and optical coherence tomography among many other fields.

Generation of electromagnetic waves was first demonstrated by Heinrich Hertz in 1887 and since then has become a leading subject of research, with an enormous range of applications covering radio communications, electronics, computing, radar technology and multi-wavelength astronomy. The accessible spectrum of electromagnetic emissions continuously extends toward shorter wavelengths from radio waves to microwaves, to optical and X-rays, challenging now the gamma-ray domain. It is also widely recognized that strong electromagnetic waves could be dangerous for health and electronics. Methods of detection of electromagnetic waves and mitigation of their undesirable effects are also in full development.

The ability of high-energy laser systems to provide complex laser pulse shapes has growing importance in many research disciplines such as laser fusion, high-energy-density physics, laboratory astrophysics, and laser conditioning of optical materials. In such laser facilities, accurate real-time predictions of laser performance are critical for maximizing experimental and operational effectiveness and flexibility. This is particularly important when real-time guidance is required by the laser facility to satisfy the demands of rapidly evolving experimental campaign needs. For example, x-ray diffraction of ramp-compressed crystalline solids can probe high-pressure solid–solid phase transformations that are inaccessible with shock compression. In this case, the laser pulse shape must be tailored to provide a specific pressure-loading profile that prevents the melting of the material due to an increase in entropy and temperature. Additionally, different ramped pulse shapes may be requested during an experimental campaign when exploring the location of phase boundaries within a complex phase diagram. To provide such laser pulse-shape flexibility over a wide range of energies requires a stable, well-characterized laser system, and an agile laser prediction model that can be optimized in real time to compensate for any drifts that may occur in laser system performance.

Coherent beam combining (CBC) technology is an important technical approach to break through the brightness limitation of a single laser beam, and has become a frontier and hotspot of laser technology research. According to the aperture filling method, CBC can be classified into two categories: filled aperture combining and tiled aperture combining. Tiled aperture CBC achieves wavefront matching among beamlets through phase control, thus efficiently increases the emission aperture, compresses the far-field divergence angle, and improves the brightness.

An international team of scientific experts has gathered to examine the current status of ultra-high-powered lasers around the world and look to the future to predict what the next generation of laser systems will offer. The culmination of their work is a major review paper 'Petawatt and Exawatt Class Lasers Worldwide', which looks at the historical context of this technology, its current and future use, and direction.

Due to the range of size, density, and resolution demands associated with industrial x-ray radiography, there is not a source that is “one-size fits all”. Compromises and optimisations must be made depending on the object of study. For example, the X-ray source required to image a small biological sample is significantly different in both spectral and spatial demands to that for an aircraft weld. Both examples, however, are readily achieved with laser driven systems. Altering the source characteristics to deliver what is needed requires continued study. This publication explores the X-ray emission from spatially constrained targets compared to standard foil targets. The research results are published in High Power Laser Science and Engineering, Volume 7, No. 2, 2019 (Armstrong, C. D. , et al. Bremsstrahlung emission from high power laser interactions with constrained targets for industrial radiography).

The data within this publication was measured during an experimental campaign using the Vulcan laser in Target Area West. We worked in conjunction with industrial partners to characterise and optimise the X-ray emission from solid target interactions with high intensity lasers. Changing the target from a foil configuration to a wire configuration was expected to improve the spatial profile of the X-ray source since there is a confined volume from which X-rays can be generated. The flux of X-ray sources is also investigated, a comparison between 25-100 μm wires and 25-600 μm thick foil is shown.

In thick targets, electrons are more likely to collide with the target material and emit bremsstrahlung prior to interacting with the sheath on the rear surface. When interacting with the sheath, electrons typically lose some energy and subsequently recirculate through the target. This recirculation causes an increase in the spatial extent of the source, as the electrons continue to travel laterally through the target. These recirculating electrons still have significant energy enough to readily generate X-rays as they continue to circulate the target.

Switching to a wire target geometry removes the flux produced from the substrate, in the transverse direction, as there is no material from which to generate X-rays. Experimentally, we show that changing from a foil target to a wire target constricts the electron expansion as the electric field on the rear-surface of the target builds rapidly and covers a high proportion of the available surface area. The change in the sheath field results in a higher population of cooler recirculating electrons, which in turn results in an increase in the measured X-ray flux. Simulations using EPOCH in 2D show the sheath field developing faster on the wire target geometry, and by using the recirculating population outputted from EPOCH in a GEANT4 simulation, the increase in x-ray emission is demonstrated by applying electric fields to the target surfaces.

This simple targetry change is readily applicable to X-ray generation with solid targets, demonstrating a significant improvement in both the spatial resolution and the overall flux of the source, without necessitating invasive or complex experimental set ups. Going forward this technique can be applied to improve the image quality without necessitating a higher energy laser driver, the simulations demonstrate a 3x improvement in the conversion efficiency from electrons to X-rays and the experimental data shows a 1.5-2x increase in the detected X-ray flux and a 2.6x increase in the spatial resolution for an industrial sample.

Comparison of wire and foil targets, a) spatial profile of X-ray emission area, b) electron density (red) and field generation (blue), c) X-ray source location from GEANT4 simulations, d) Schematic of multiple X-ray source characterisation, e) ESF from sample object for each target type.

Intense THz radiation sources have attracted increasing research interest due to their applications in coherent and incoherent control of matter, light and electron beams. With terawatt and petawatt laser systems, THz radiation from intense laser-plasma interactions (ILPI) has been demonstrated as a novel intense THz source. The measurement of THz spectrum is very important to determine the generation mechanisms of the THz sources.

However, the existing THz spectrum measurement techniques do not work for ILPI-based THz sources. This is because the repetition rate of ILPI-based THz sources is quite low at present, typically below 1 Hz, even in single shot. As a result, multi-shot scanning methods, such as electro-optic sampling and autocorrelation measurement with a Michelson interferometer, are almost impossible to characterize the ILPI sources. Moreover, the bandwidth of ILPI THz sources can reach tens of THz, which also limits the application of electro-optic sampling techniques since the effective bandwidth is only several THz for common electrooptical crystals such as ZnTe and GaP.

New diagnosing methods or techniques, which can deliver single-shot and broad-band spectral measurements, should be developed. A research group from Beijing National Laboratory for Condensed Matter Physics, Institute of Physics, Chinese Academy of Sciences developed a multichannel calorimeter system which was used in a single-shot way to characterize the spectrum of THz radiation in high-power picosecond laser-solid interaction experiment. THz radiation from target front surface propagates backward relative to the incident laser, which is referred as backward THz radiation (BTR). A number of mechanisms are proposed to be responsible for the BTR generation, such as coherent transition radiation, linear mode conversion, and surface fast electron currents. In the experiment, the dependence of the BTR energy and spectrum on laser energy, target thickness and pre-plasma scale length is studied. By comparing the experimental results with theoretical mechanisms, it is concluded that coherent transition radiation is responsible for the low frequency component (< 1 THz) of BTR. The Linear Mode Conversion mechanism starts to work when a large-scale pre-plasma is formed in the target front surface, which enhances the high frequency components (> 3 THz). The research results are published in High Power Laser Science and Engineering, Volume 7, Issue 1, 2019 (H. Liu, et al,Study of backward terahertz radiation from intense picosecond laser–solid interactions using a multichannel calorimeter system).

“The method of THz radiation spectrum measurement used in the article is not novel, but it provides a valid way to characterize the ILPL sources. And the spectrometer will play an important role in the studies and applications of ILPI THz sources based on large-scale laser facilities.” said Profess Yutong Li.

The multichannel calorimeter system developed in this work provides a convenient single-shot method to study the generation mechanism of the broad-band THz radiation generated in large laser facility-based experiments. The instrument should be updated in the future to improve its spectral resolution.

The schematic layout of the multichannel calorimeter system in the experiment

With the dawn of new high-power laser and accelerator facilities, modern physics was able to reach extreme states of matter normally found only in the universe or deep inside the core of our planet. One of those extreme regimes is referred to as warm dense matter (WDM), which in fact is a type of state reaching moderately high temperatures ranging from 0.1 to 100 eV, and solid densities, which mostly corresponds to strongly coupled plasmas with fully or partially degenerate electron species. This is also a primary reason why WDM is poorly understood by theory.

Often, WDM exists at high pressures reaching above 1 M bar both in a laboratory as well as in astrophysical objects. WDM is common in astrophysical bodies such as brown dwarfs, crusts of old stars, white dwarf stars and high-pressure phenomena such as supernova explosions, collisions of celestial bodies and astrophysical jets. The study of structure, thermodynamic state, equation of state (EOS) and transport properties of WDM has become one of the key aspects of laboratory astrophysicsh as well as inertial confinement fusion (ICF), where the imploding capsule goes through the WDM regime on its way to ignition.

A review article published in High Power Laser Science and Engineering, Volume 6, Issue 4, 2018(Katerina Falk, Experimental methods for warm dense matter research) introduced some of the key research topics including phase separation of species within planetary mantles and phase transitions in elements under extreme pressures inside planetary cores or during asteroid impacts with examples of the most exciting recent experimental results.

The review article makes brief overview of major theoretical efforts to study the structure of WDM. A comprehensive introduction to the experimental methods in WDM research, including various types of generation of these states at different laboratory facilities as well as the diagnostic methods used, was provided. The primarily emphasized the novel methods to reach highly compressed states using high power lasers and free electron X-ray lasers that have generated a rapid development in this field over the past two decades, and also discussed for completeness.

Especially, the development of short-pulse optical and X-ray laser pulses meant a true revolution for laboratory astrophysics. Many new diagnostic methods based on these light sources have recently been developed to study WDM in its full complexity. Ultrafast nonequilibrium dynamics has been accessed for the first time thanks to sub-picosecond laser pulses achieved at new facilities.

Recent years saw a number of major discoveries with direct implications to astrophysics such as the formation of diamond at pressures relevant to interiors of frozen giant planets, metallic hydrogen under conditions such as those found inside Jupiter’s dynamo or formation of lonsdaleite crystals under extreme pressures during asteroid impacts. This article is the first and yet still relatively brief and approachable review that tackles all of the experimental techniques developed for experimental study of WDM and should serve as a good introduction to the field for students or experienced researchers interested to broaden their scope.

A snapshot of a DFT-MD simulation of isochoricaly heated warm dense beryllium at a temperature of 12 eV. Shown are the position of the nuclei (green spheres) and several isosurfaces of the electronic density ranging from core electrons to valence electrons.

Accretion processes are among the most important phenomena in high-energy astrophysics as they are widely believed to provide the power supply in several astrophysical objects (from stellar objects to massive black holes), and are the main source of radiation in a large number of interactive binary systems. The release of gravitational energy in the form of radiation energy is a complex physical process but fundamental in interpreting astronomical observations.

Among the numerous accretion systems, from young stellar objects to active galactic nuclei, the research group from Ecole Polytechnique of Paris is particularly interested in those where an accretion column is believed to be formed (polars). They are close binary systems containing a white dwarf (WD) that accretes matter from a late type Roche-lobe filling secondary star. In these systems, the magnetic field is strong enough to prevent the formation of an accretion disk, so matter piles up to the compact object’s magnetic poles, leading to the formation of an accretion column. These objects are potential embryos of thermonuclear supernovae, standard candles that allow us to measure the distance of distant galaxies, and their cosmological repercussions. Therefore, in studying polars the researchers can provide some answers to the cosmological challenges. The impact of the supersonic free-fall accreting matter on the WD photosphere leads to the formation of a radiative reverse shock and gives rise to strong emission from soft to hard x-rays. Astronomical observations showed unexplained luminosity oscillations, which could be related, for example, to unstable thermal oscillations of the shock front or magnetohydrodynamics (MHD) instabilities in the accretion column. As the reverse shock position in these systems is too close to the WD photosphere (~ 100-1000 km), the accretion region is unresolved by direct observations and structural parameters such as the shock height, temperature cannot be defined. The structure of this high-energy environment depends as well on multi-scale physics introducing issues for theoretical and numerical modeling. The members from research group have developed a new experimental platform that couples a strong external magnetic field (up to 15 T) with high-power lasers (∼kJ), enabling to collimate the flow without using a tube and to study the magnetized reverse-shock dynamics related to accretion processes with a particular emphasis on POLAR. Related results are published in High Power Laser Science and Engineering, Vol. 6, Issue 3, 2018 (B. Albertazzi, et al., Experimental platform for the investigation of magnetized-reverse-shock dynamics in the context of POLAR).

“The only way to study these systems in detail is to reproduce a scaled astrophysical experiment” said Dr. Bruno Albertazzi. Preliminary results show that an instability seems to develop in the accretion column and the structure of the magnetized reverse shock seems complex but needs to be confirmed in future work.

2D MHD radiative Flash simulation performed 75 ns after the beginning of the interaction.

As laser facilities have grown in size and power, understanding how electromagnetic pulses (EMPs) are generated has become an issue of great practical importance. High intensity lasers can induce strong fields (MV•m-1) and massive currents (MA) in solid targets, producing EMP radiation that disrupts electrical measurements and damages electrical equipment. A number of different mechanisms have been proposed to explain the broad spectral profile of laser-driven EMP, ranging from direct current processes up to transition radiation at terahertz frequency. When high-power lasers interact with materials, they accelerate hot electrons that escape from and electrically polarize the target. If the target is grounded, a neutralization current is pulled out of the chamber through the target support. It is thought that this current is responsible for the emission of intense electromagnetic pulses at gigahertz frequency that are disruptive to electronics. Today, there is growing interest in the applications of directed EMPs and fast current generation, though with the advent of intense, high repetition-rate lasers like the Extreme Light Infrastructure, strategies to limit EMP emission remain of considerable importance.

The research group had two objectives in the study: first to characterize the energy of the EMP emission (to understand how it varied with laser and target parameters) and second to see if it could be reduced. The research group of professor N. C. Woolsey used the Vulcan West laser system at the Rutherford Appleton Laboratory for our experiment, reaching a maximum intensity of ∼2×1019W•cm-2 at best focus. The laser beam was directed onto copper targets mounted on a variety of support stalks. To measure the energy of the EMP, the researchers installed three passive probes behind glass windows on opposite sides of the interaction chamber. A Bdot and Ddot probe were positioned facing the front of the laser target and a further Bdot probe was directed towards the target rear. Probe signals at megahertz and gigahertz frequency were then integrated by first author P. Bradford to produce a measure of the total EMP energy. The results have been published in High Power Laser Science and Engineering, Vol 6, 2018 (P. Bradford et al., EMP control and characterization on high-power laser systems).

The first phase of the experiment looked at how EMP energy scaled with different lasers and target parameters, in order to assess qualitative agreement with theoretical models. Varying the laser energy from 7-70 J, the researchers observed a linear relationship with EMP energy. They also looked at the variation of EMP energy with laser pulse duration, pre-pulse delay and defocus. These scans suggested that the higher the laser intensity, or the more energy coupled to the plasma, the greater the EMP emission. When the researchers examined the effect of target size on EMP, they found that smaller foils and wire targets produced drastically reduced EMP. Indeed, EMP energy was over an order of magnitude less for wire targets (Ø=25-100μm) than for 3 mm×8 mm rectangular foils.

Since the EMP is generated by a current discharge mechanism (which can be pictured as a radio-frequency radio frequency control (RLC) circuit), a key experimental objective was to see if the EMP energy could be modified by changing the resistance, R, inductance, L, and capacitance, C, of the target mount. The research group fielded three different geometrical designs: a cylindrical stalk, a mount with sinusoidal surface undulations and a spiral stalk (see Figure 1). First, the research group replaced Al cylindrical stalks with plastic and found that there was a very significant drop in EMP energy (over one third reduced). The researchers attribute this to increased stalk impedance that limits the size of the neutralization current. Then they replaced the cylindrical plastic stalk with a plastic spiral and plastic sinusoidal design. For the spiral stalk the effect was clear: the researchers found that the plastic spiral stalk reduced the EMP energy by over an order of magnitude compared with Al cylinders. The researchers also saw a significant reduction for the stalk with sinusoidal undulations, though the effect was less pronounced.

To verify whether the change in EMP was independent of the laser-target interaction, author Y. Zhang used an electron spectrometer to record the energy of emitted electrons emitted from the target rear surface. Her results showed that there was no significant reduction in electron emission for shots with the modified stalks.

To see if reduced EMP energy from the modified stalks was due to classical RLC effects, author F. Consoli ran a series of 3D particle-in-cell and electromagnetic simulations in which a cone of energetic electrons was emitted from a central target and the EMP energy measured at different points inside a virtual chamber. The simulations suggest that there will be a greater reduction in EMP than observed when using insulating versus conducting stalks and that geometry is a less important factor than stalk conductivity. It is therefore possible that other physical mechanisms may be required to explain our observations. For instance, charged particles and ionizing radiation from the laser-plasma interaction could be deposited along the length of plastic stalks, reducing the effectiveness of the insulator. This could also explain why the modified stalks were so successful, because their unusual geometry serves to partially shield the stalk surface against incoming particles/radiation and thereby guard against electrical breakdown. A second set of simulations were run with a stalk of half-length which showed much higher EMP energy and therefore provides us with tentative support for this theory. However, since the simulations did not take stalk ionization into account, more experiments are required before any definitive pronouncements can be made.

The experiment has demonstrated that a very significant reduction in EMP can be achieved by a simple modification of the target mount. In particular, a plastic spiral stalk has been shown to reduce the EMP energy by over an order of magnitude versus a metallic rod. The researchers are working on a complete explanation of why the stalks are effective using spectral analysis and by experimenting with other stalk designs. The researchers would also like to compare our laser and target parameter scans with leading theoretical models of EMP. Progress in this field depends on our ability to differentiate between the different mechanisms responsible for laser-driven EMP and, in understanding them, to tailor the emission according to our needs.

Three designs for the laser target mounts.

“Rigorous cleanliness on the National Ignition Facility (NIF) is essential to assure that 99.5% optical efficiency is maintained on each of its 192 beam lines by minimizing obscuration and contamination-induced laser damage.” said James A. Pryatel and William H. Gourdin from Akima Infrastructure Services and Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory.

In high power laser driving devices, it is essential to nullify the quality-reduction of the light beam caused by the deposition of contaminants on the optical elements and the laser damage caused by the contaminants to maintain optical efficiency of each of the multiple beam lines. The cleanliness of the cavity of the multisegment disk amplifier (MSA) has become one of the key factors that restrict the performance improvement of the MSA. Due to the presence of sealing materials, bonding materials, and metal parts in the MSA, large amounts of aerosols will be generated under the irradiation of high flux xenon lamps and high energy laser. Recent work has shown that xenon lamp radiation is the main reason for the damage of the components when the contaminant particles reach the surface of the optical element. Due to xenon lamp radiation, the elevated temperature of the surface contaminants is sufficient to melt or decompose most of the contaminant particles. This will generate local thermal gradients and thermal shocks on the surface of the optical element, causing hairline cracks on the surface of the optical element, which would expand further. Researchers have conducted extensive research on optical component cleaning procedures and steps, environmental requirements for the use of optical components, and the law of the settlement of contaminants.

Since NIF is one of the pioneers in building high power laser drivers, research on the cleanliness in the internal optical components of integrated chip amplifiers abroad was conducted earlier. Based on the accurate cleanliness identification system (SWIPE）and analytical chemistry techniques used for analysis of non-volatile residues and molecular contaminants while studying the antireflective coating of optical elements in the National Ignition Facility, S.C. Sommer et al. from Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory found that the antireflective coating absorbs the airborne molecular contaminations (AMCs). Ghost images would be produced, and the performance of the antireflective coating would be further reduced after a step of loosening. At the same time, the small molecular weight is volatile, but the large molecular weight is volatile only near the vapor-pressure. As the pressure of the spatial filter is about 5-10 torr (1 torr≈133.322 Pa), just near the large molecular weight vapor pressure, this is one of the sources of the AMCs. The measures to ensure the cleanliness in the installation process include mobile clean room, quick connection technology (no other contamination induced activities in the connection process), and positive pressure assembly. The human factors in the installation process have great influence. Based on the idea of modularization and reducing human factor contamination sources, John Horvath from Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory proposed that the installation of MSA should be carried out in the environment with a cleanliness level of class 100 with the maintenance structure of the amplifier being installed at the bottom of the amplifier, and the amplifier should be installed and replaced online by a sealed transport car. Wang Congyu from SIOM proposed a special technology of the combined MSA for Shenguang II laser driver system. Cheng Xiaofeng et al. from Chinese Academy of Engineering studied the design of the fan filter unit at the top of the combined MSA of the Shenguang-III laser driver system, and introduced some technical measures to ensure the effectiveness of the contamination control such as cleaning method, clean detection, and clean protection in detail.

Most of the studies above aim at the cleaning of the optical elements and cleaning control during installation. However, the cleanliness maintenance of the optical elements in operation is a dynamic process and effective flow field optimization is needed to remove the contaminants produced during the operation. There is no mature research report worldwide on the coupling of gas-solid two-phase flow between the contaminants and the clean gas, and the non-whirl flow of the internal amplifier in the MSA.

Since the clean environment of the MSA internal cavity has a great influence on the optical elements inside, it must be blown with nitrogen or air flow so as to reduce the contamination concentration after pumped by the xenon lamp. Therefore, reasonable and effective flow field of the MSA cavity is particularly important. The particles of contamination and clean gases belong to the category of gas-solid two-phase flow. Computational fluid dynamics (CFD), as a powerful tool for flow field analysis, can optimize the flow field with half effort. With the progress of industrial field, especially in the field of large-scale integrated circuits and biomedicine, the design of a clean room and the optimization of the flow field are important prerequisites for ensuring the quality of the products. Bing Wang from Tsinghua University provides a simplified mathematical method to evaluate the average air velocity and particle concentration by using a similar principle in the air pumping clean room for the wind bottom side. The flow distribution indoor is optimized by CFD technology. Se-Jin Yoo from Hanyang University uses Euler algorithm to simulate the settling velocity of particles. Li Yan from Tianjin University and Zhang Weigong from Harbin University of Civil Engineering and Architecture simulate the flow cleanroom and use air age to predict the flow field. The study on the maintenance of the cleanliness of the MSA revolves around the three factors, which are filter device, airflow rate, and flow pattern of gas flow. However, the research on vector flow of the cavity of the MSA remains to be established. The vector flow is not in just a single direction but can be in any direction. The dilution purification mechanism is not only different from the dilution-mixing effects with non-unidirectional cleaning technology, but also from the parallel streamline piston-effect with unidirectional flow. Although the streamlines of the vector flow are not parallel like the non-unidirectional flow cleanroom, they do not cross. The vector flow does not depend on the mixing effect, however, it relies on the oblique flow to discharge clean gas and contaminant particles.

The paper published in High Power Laser Science and Engineering, Vol.6, e1, 2018 (Ren Zhiyuan et al., Optimizing the cleanliness in multi-segment disk amplifiers based on vector flow schemes) studied the numerical model of the vector flow scheme for the MSA. The experiment confirmed the validity of the numerical model. The optimized vector flow scheme of MSA can more efficiently achieve and maintain its required cleanliness level.

In conclusion, with vector flow scheme, there is no obvious eddy flow in the cavity of the multisegment amplifier and on the surface of the optical elements. Therefore, vector flow can achieve a higher level of cleanliness for the amplifier more efficiently and quickly.

Streamlines for the flow field of the multisegment disk amplifier. Figure (a) and (b) are flow field on the surface of optical elements, Figure (c) and (d) are flow field inside the multisegment disk amplifier. In either circumstance, there is no obvious turbulence in the flow field distribution, and the flow field of the clean gas is very smooth.

The Extreme Light Infrastructure Summer School (ELISS) will be held in Dolní Brezany, Czech Republic from August 25 to 29, 2025.

By combining the National Ignition Facility (NIF) laser and ultra-light metal foams, researchers at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL) have produced the brightest X-ray source to date — about twice as bright as previous solid metal versions.

In one single day, 1st of November 2024, a total of 274 shots were sent towards E6 experimental area. With pulses duration close to 23 fs , the cumulated total peak power of 2.3 ExaWatt (~2300 PW) from Multi-PW Pulses was delivered for experiment.

The Department of Energy has selected a new research partnership led by LLNL that aims to lay the groundwork for the next evolution of extreme ultraviolet (EUV) lithography, centered around a Lab-developed system dubbed the BAT laser.

With dual lasers, researchers at the Berkeley Lab Laser Accelerator Center accelerated a high-quality beam of electrons to 10 billion electronvolts in just 30 centimeters. The experiment gives scientists a “frame-by-frame” look at how a petawatt laser interacts with a long plasma channel, knowledge that's crucial for building future compact particle accelerators.

Berkeley Lab researchers are supplying essential components for SLAC’s Linac Coherent Light Source high-energy upgrade, which promises a powerful new tool for scientific research and exploration.

The 6th European Conference on Plasma Diagnostics of the Conference will be held in Prague, Czechia (April 7th - 10th 2025) and organised by the Institute of Plasma Physics of the Czech Academy of Sciences.

The University of Rochester's Laboratory for Laser Energetics (LLE) is collaborating with a technology transfer partner Sydor Technologies, which has been awarded a $1.15 million Phase-II Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) grant from the US Department of Energy (DOE) for their project “Plasma-Electrode Pockels Cells for Inertial Fusion Facilities.”

The thirty-third annual International Laser Physics Conference (LPHYS'25) will be held from June 30 to July 4, 2025 in the city of Szeged, Hungary, hosted by the ELI ERIC.

LPA Special Workshop on Intelligent Systems will be held at the Department of Physics of the University of Oxford from January 13 to 16, 2025.

The workshop venue will be Sorbonne Université, will be held from November 18 – 22, 2024 in Paris.

The 51st EPS Conference on Plasma Physics will be held from the 7th to the 11th of July 2025 in Vilnius, Lithuania.

The 13th International Conference on Inertial Fusion Sciences and Applications will be held from the 14th to the 19th of September 2025 in Tours, France.

A Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory-led team was awarded $3.4M to develop new alloys for first wall fusion reactors and enable commercial fusion energy through ARPA-E’s Creating Hardened And Durable fusion first Wall Incorporating Centralized Knowledge (CHADWICK) program.

The launch of the EU co-funded project Lasers4EU on October 1, 2024, marks a new era in laser research. By bringing together 29 leading laser research institutions across Europe, the project offers a central platform with unprecedented access to cutting-edge laser technologies and services for external scientists from academia and industry.

The American Physics Society (APS) just awarded a research team from the Laboratory for Laser Energetics (LLE) with the John Dawson Award for Excellence in Plasma Physics Research.

Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory (PPPL) research physicist Lan Gao has received a 2024 Early Career Research Program (ECRP) award from the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) to develop the next generation of diagnostic tools that will provide precise measurements for fusion experiments and future fusion pilot plants.

Report of the 2023 LaserNetUS Data&Diagnostics Workshop.

The 2024 Topical Workshop presented by the LLRF Workshop Series, a unique opportunity for learning, networking and sharing experiences, will be held in person in Italy at the INFN-LNF - Via Enrico Fermi 60 - Frascati (Rome) from 28 to 30 October 2024.

ATAP researchers are developing the technologies needed to advance fusion as a source of sustainable, low-cost energy.

New federal funding will allow Rochester scientists and their European collaborators to study the feasibility of coherent light sources beyond x-rays.

At the Swiss Light Source SLS of the Paul Scherrer Institute, another important step has been taken towards the completion of the SLS 2.0 upgrade project.

The 21st International Congress on Plasma Physics (ICPP 2024) will take place in Ghent, Belgium from September 8 to 13, 2024.

The density-functional theory (DFT) coding team, led by University of Rochester Department of Mechanical Engineering PhD student John Cappelletti (advised by Prof. Suxing Hu), has created a finite-element-based DFT code called MELIORA. MELIORA will help us answer some key high-energy-density questions related to inertial confinement fusion and the Stockpile Stewardship Program, such as shock release and viscus mixing.

Workshop on Micro and Nano-Structured Materials for Experiments with High-Power Lasers will take place in Lisbon, Portugal on 21 September 2024.

Laser-based research into the early detection of lung cancer is receiving a new boost. A high-ranking delegation led by Prof. Zheng You, President of Huazhong University of Science and Technology in Wuhan, has now signed a Memorandum of Understanding with the attoworld team at the Centre for Advanced Laser Applications (CALA).

The Institute of Plasma Physics and Lasers & the Cost Action CA21128 PROBONO organize the Intensive School “Laser, Plasma & Fusion” in Rethymnon, Greece, from 2nd to 5th of September 2024.

The 4th International Workshop on Proton-Boron Fusion will take place in Frascati, from September 30th to October 3rd, 2024.

With their successful applications at Software Campus, Dr. Sonja Gerlach and Michael Bachhammer are among the youngest research group leaders at LMU. Both work at the Centre for Advanced Laser Applications on the efficiency of the IT infrastructure of the ATLAS-3000 laser and its associated ion acceleration experiments. Here, they talk about their projects.

The 15th International Conference on Synchrotron Radiation Instrumentation will take place from 26 - 30 August 2024 in Hamburg (Germany).

The Network on Extreme Intensity Laser Systems (NEILS) Meeting 2024 is taking place Monday 22nd to Tuesday 23rd July.

The Extreme Light Infrastructure (ELI) User Meeting will take place on 26-28 June 2024 as an in-person event, hosted by the ELI Beamlines Facility in Dolni Brezany, Czech Republic.

The CLF's Target Fabrication group and Scitech Precision have been investigating a new way to make laser targets – with robots!

Researchers developed new methods that produce intense attosecond pulses and pulse pairs to gain insights into the fastest motions inside atoms and molecules. It could lead to advancements in fields ranging from chemistry to materials science.

A team of international scientists from Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL), Fraunhofer Institute for Laser Technology ILT, and the Extreme Light Infrastructure (ELI) collaborated on an experiment to optimise high-intensity high-repetition rate laser technology using machine learning. The experiment represents a significant leap forward in the study, understanding, and practical application of high-intensity lasers.

Proton-boron fuel requires implosion to burn. In order to build a correct model of the implosion process driven by a high energy laser, we need to understand the material properties and behaviour of the boron fuel under extreme pressures and temperatures. This is no simple task as we’re talking about millions of atmospheric pressures and millions to billions of Kelvins (degrees), occurring after petawatts (1,000 trillion watts) of energy have passed through fuel no bigger than a millimetre in size.

Boost for Inertial Fusion Energy (IFE) in Germany: The PriFUSIO research project aims to systematically develop key technologies for climate-neutral fusion power plants of the future. The consortium, led by the ILT in Aachen, brings together fusion start-ups, medium-sized companies, large corporations, the Laser Zentrum Hannover, and the Fraunhofer Institutes IOF in Jena and ILT in Aachen, creating a diverse collaboration of industry and public research institutions. The project will focus on principles for targeted component development and explore practical photonic approaches for the commercial utilization of laser-driven IFE. The Federal Ministry of Education and Research has allocated 18 million euros for the project over the next three years.

Ignition was the dominant theme at this year's LLNL National Ignition Facility and Jupiter Laser Facility (NIF and JLF) User Groups Meeting.

The experimental physicist joins the Max Born Institute as a new Director and has accepted a chair at Humboldt University of Berlin.

"Ready? Signal sent!" In the control room of a research center in Romania, engineer Antonia Toma activates the world's most powerful laser, which promises revolutionary advances in everything from the health sector to space.

The 19th Direct Drive and Fast Ignition Workshop (DDFIW) contains a series of meetings dedicated to inertial confinement research in Europe. DDFIW provides a unique opportunity for European and overseas scientists working in theory, simulations, and experiments to present and discuss their latest results and future plansin an informal atmosphere. The meeting also addresses new schemes for inertial confinement fusion and related science at the cutting edge of high energy density physics research. Important dates: LPI satellite meeting: 21 May 2024; DDFIW workshop: 22-24 May 2024

European Union funds CASUS research project with 700,000 euros

The Extreme Light Infrastructure (ELI) is set to launch the 4th ELI User Call on 25 March with an open Call period until 29 April. This Call will continue to support a wide range of experiments, leveraging ELI's state-of-the-art equipment at ELI ALPS and ELI Beamlines. Researchers and scientists worldwide are invited to submit their proposals which will be evaluated based on scientific excellence by an international peer-review panel.

In a paper published in Physical Review Letters, researchers from the University of Rochester, along with colleagues at the University of California, San Diego, discovered a new class of plasma oscillations—the back-and-forth, wave-like movement of electrons and ions. The findings have implications for improving the performance of miniature particle accelerators and the reactors used to create fusion energy.

Michelle Marshall has been appointed as the new leader for the High-Energy-Density Physics (HEDP) Experiments Group in the Experimental Division, bringing her extensive expertise in studying materials under extreme conditions to the forefront.

Laserlab-Europe Talk: 1. Lasers, related radiation sources and diagnostics at ENEA-Frascati for applications to material science, radiation hardness of materials and components. 2. Radiation sources based on laser plasma interaction and applications in materials science.

Following ignition demonstrations at the National Ignition Facility, the prospect of developing a fusion energy source using lasers looks brighter than ever. Here, SLAC experts weigh in on what it will take to develop the science and technology toward that aim and how the lab and its partners will contribute.

The DOE Office of Accelerator Research and Development and Production organized a Basic Research Needs workshop to assess R&D needed to enable high-impact scientific applications of laser technology to address current and future needs.

Prof. Peter Norreys has received the prestigious Edward Teller Award from the American Nuclear Society for his influential work in using lasers to generate particles for scientific applications such as fast ignition fusion.

Studies using recent ignition experiments indicate an upgrade to 3 MJ of laser energy at NIF could increase fusion output by a factor of 10, resulting in yields in the 30 MJ range. A proposal, still in the early stages, could turn this idea into reality.

This interdisciplinary school will bring together all research areas within EuPRAXIA-DN and will be held in the 'Eternal City' Rome in Italy from 22-26 April 2024. Registration deadline: 29th February 2024

PhD Academy on Energy and Society. The Case of Fusion, June 10-15, 2024, application deadline February 29, 2024.

The Oxford Laser Plasma Accelerators Group have demonstrated a solution to two key challenges in laser-driven plasma accelerators, allowing them to potentially reach higher energies over smaller distances. 

We are pleased to announce the 37th European Conference on Laser Interaction with Matter (ECLIM 2024), to be held in Lisbon, Portugal, on 16-20th of September 2024. The Conference will be held at the IST Congress Centre, Instituto Superior Técnico, Alameda Campus, Lisbon.

European scientists are reinvigorating pan-European plans for laser fusion energy.

Osaka University (OU) invites applications for a full-time faculty position at the rank of Professor in the Laser Fusion Science Research Division at the Institute of Laser Engineering (ILE).

Rob Shalloo, a staff scientist in the Plasma Accelerators group at DESY, has been selected by the German Research Foundation (DFG) for the prestigious Emmy Noether Programme.

ATAP researchers aim to develop next-generation algorithms to advance our understanding of laser-driven inertial fusion energy.

The 2023 Nobel Prize in Physics was awarded for the development of attosecond science – a field that sheds light on the movement of electrons on their natural timescale. Several researchers at the Swiss X-ray free electron laser SwissFEL are recognised in the scientific background to this prize. This is no coincidence. With recent technical developments enabling attosecond and fully coherent X-ray pulses, SwissFEL promises to rapidly advance this emerging research area.

The Hub IFE-COLoR (Inertial Fusion Energy-Consortium on LPI Research) has received $10 million in funding from the U.S. Department of Energy's Office of Fusion Energy Science to advance research on inertial fusion energy science (IFE) and technology.

The U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) has awarded a four-year, $16 million project to a multi-institutional team led by Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL) to accelerate inertial fusion energy (IFE) science and technology. This effort will be carried out by the newly established IFE Science and Technology Accelerated Research for Fusion Innovation and Reactor Engineering (STARFIRE) Hub.

Europe's largest laser research capability, the Extreme Light Infrastructure (ELI ERIC), this week declared their commitment to the mission of laser fusion at a dedicated two-day workshop in Prague.

The 10th International Conference on Ultrahigh Intensity Lasers (ICUIL 2024) will take place on the island of Cozumel, Mexico from Sept. 9th to 13rd 2024. Cozumel is a quiet island in the Caribbean Sea, off the eastern coast of Mexico's Yucatán Peninsula.

AAC2024 will be held at the Big Sky Resort in Big Sky, Montana, on Sunday, June 9th – Friday, June 14th, 2024.

The 50th Conference of Plasma Physics will be organized in Salamanca, Spain, from 8 to 12 July 2024

On Oct. 30, Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL)'s National Ignition Facility (NIF) set a new record for laser energy, firing 2.2 megajoules (MJ) of energy for the first time on an ignition target. This experiment resulted in 3.4 MJ of fusion energy yield, achieving ignition and delivering the second-highest neutron yield ever achieved on NIF.

ELI User Meeting will be organized in Szeged, Hungary, December 4. – .5. ,2023.

A new generation DiPOLE laser, delivering 10 J pulses at 100 Hz repetition rate (1 kW average power) has been developed and commissioned by the CALTA team at the CLF as part of the Widespread collaboration with HiLASE (Czech Republic).

Naturally occurring subatomic particles called muons can help us see inside places like the Great Pyramid of Giza. Now LLNL has partnered with industry and academic partners to rapidly generate muons using lasers.

The article entitled "10 PW peak power femtosecond laser pulses at ELI-NP" was selected as the 2022 High Power Laser Science and Engineering Editor-in-Chief Choice Award paper.

On October 16-19, 2023, the 5th International Symposium on High Power Laser Science and Engineering (HPLSE2023) & Celebration on the 10th Anniversary of the Journal High Power Laser Science and Engineering (HPL) took place in Suzhou, China. At the forum, HPL launched two awards: HPLSE Outstanding Contribution Award and Excellent Article for HPLSE 10th Anniversary.

High Power Laser Science and Engineering (HPLSE) was publicized at the 5th Conference on Extremely High Intensity Laser Physics (ExHILP 2023) which was held at Center for Relativistic Laser Science (CoReLS), Gwangju, Republic of Korea from Sep. 12 to 15 in 2023.

Rochester-based Sydor Technologies has been awarded a $200,000 Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) grant from the U.S. Department of Energy to work with the LLE to assess the commercial feasibility of the mid-scale plasma-electrode Pockels Cell (mPEPC) system developed at LLE.

The fiber laser group at the Institute of Applied Physics (IAP) at Friedrich Schiller University Jena is actively involved in the development of such new generation lasers and we are recruiting.

The U.S. Department of Energy recently announced $28.5 million in funding to LaserNetUS to further advance discovery science and inertial fusion energy (IFE) research.

John Collier, Director of the Central Laser Facility (CLF), an institution of the Science and Technology Facilities Council at the Rutherford Appleton Laboratory, near Oxford, UK, has been elected as the new Executive Director of Laserlab-Europe AISBL.

The Intense Laser Irradiation Laboratory (ILIL), operating at the Pisa headquarters of the National Institute of Optics (INO) of the National Research Council (CNR) and led by Research Director Dr. Leonida A. Gizzi, has been welcomed as a new member of the laser infrastructure consortium “Laserlab-Europe AISBL”.

The U.S. Department of Energy (DoE) has awarded a grant to HB11 Energy as part of its 'Innovation Network for Fusion Energy' (INFUSE) program with the objective, "to accelerate basic research to develop cost-effective, innovative fusion energy technologies in the private sector." The program will provide access to world-leading expertise from the Laboratory for Laser…

Experimental particle physicist Professor David Newbold has commenced work as STFC’s Executive Director of National Laboratories.

Laser–Plasma Interactions Group Leader, David Turnbull, was selected to receive the 2023 Edouard Fabre Prize for his pioneering contributions to inertial confinement fusion (ICF) through innovative laser–plasma instability studies.

Plasma accelerator AWAKE has tested scalability and is all set to begin its second phase of data taking with an upgraded plasma source.

The Fraunhofer Institute for Laser Technology ILT invites the laser community to the 14th International Laser Technology Congress AKL in Aachen from April 17 to 19, 2024. At AKL'24, users, manufacturers and developers from various areas of the laser industry will have the opportunity to exchange information on the latest developments in the field of applied laser technology in production.

Laser physicists from the attoworld team at the Max Planck Institute of Quantum Optics (MPQ) and Ludwig-Maximilians Universität München (LMU) have developed a new and unique high-power laser system for driving the attosecond beamlines and ultrafast attosecond experiments at MPQ.

An experiment on a NIF Discovery Science research project was conducted by Dr. N. Iwata (Associate Professor, ILE) and the team at the National Ignition Facility (NIF) of Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in the United States. 

DiPOLE100X (D100X), a laser we were recently commissioned to build, has smashed all expectations during its first official experiment at the European XFEL in Hamburg, Germany.

The HiLASE Centre wants to become one of the respected leaders defining the trends in high power laser applications. To be the first-choice R&D partner for companies and research organizations seeking innovative laser technologies and solutions, on the Earth and beyond…

Shock-induced hydrodynamics research at the Omega Laser Facility is advancing flow visualization at ultrahigh pressures.

BMBF-funded RUBIN consortium sets out with ambitious goals

A spinoff start-up company of the U.S. Department of Energy's (DOE) Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory (PPPL) is among the first round of awardees of DOE's $46 million Milestone-Based Fusion Development Program, which supports public-private partnerships to speed the development of a pilot fusion power plant.

The 65th Annual Meeting of the APS Division of Plasma Physics (DPP) will be held in Denver, Colorado, October 30-November 3, 2023. All technical sessions will be held in the DPP headquarters hotel, Sheraton Denver Downtown Hotel, located at 1550 Court Place, Denver, Colorado 80202.

PLASMA 2023 International Conference on Research and Applications of Plasmas which will be held in September 18-22, 2023 in Warsaw, Poland.

The 5th Conference on Extremely High Intensity Laser Physics (ExHILP 2023) is held at Center for Relativistic Laser Science (CoReLS), Gwangju, Korea from Sep. 12 to 15 in 2023. It consists of 3 tutorial/keynote talks, 9 topical sessions accommodating invited and contributed talks, and 1 poster session.

The 20th International Symposium on Laser-Aided Plasma Diagnostics (LAPD20) is organized by National Institute for Fusion Science and Hokkaido University. LAPD20 will take place from Sunday, 10 September 2023 (evening reception) to Thursday 14 September 2023 at Kyoto Garden Palace Hotel in Kyoto, Japan.

We recently introduced 5 new application areas that the HiLASE Centre will focus on. The first is dedicated to advanced laser processing and manufacturing technologies. Its expert guarantor is Ing. Jan Brajer, Ph.D. (Head of Department: Industrial Laser Applications).

Ultrafast laser physicists from the attoworld team at the Max Planck Institute of Quantum Optics (MPQ) and Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich (LMU) have gained new insights into the dynamics of electrons in solids immediately after photoinjection.

Applications are now invited for access to the Artemis laser facility at the Central Laser Facility (CLF) (Science and Technology Facilities Council (STFC) Rutherford Appleton Laboratory), during the period December 2023 - June 2024. A total of fourteen weeks' access is available on the facility. We are offering access to both the 1-kHz and 100-kHz laser systems.

Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL) and University of California, Davis researchers are assisting Arizona State University with a new laser facility that will use ultrafast pulsed X-ray beams to study biological processes, materials and other research at the atomic level.

15th May 2023, marks the official Opening Ceremony for the CLF's brand-new building, the Engineering & Technology Centre (ETC).

We're building “Superlasers for the real world”. We offer innovative laser technologies and solutions, and effective applications in industry, while constantly pushing the boundaries of laser technology to benefit the Czech and European economy, as well as advancing laser use on Earth and beyond.

The elections were closed the 14th of April. The election committee has found that all voters are eligible and all votes valid. The three candidates obtaining the largest number of votes – Luca Volpe, Alexis Casner and Piotr Raczka – are elected in the Board. 

CLF Talking Science! On Friday 19 May 2023 (13:30 and 19:00), with Dr Andy Ward.

Professor Stewart Boogert will drive the continued growth and development of the Cockcroft Institute.

There are four term (two year) positions at CNR National Institute of Optics. One position is for senior researcher and three positions are for researcher. The deadline is 2nd May, 2023.

The fifth edition of the Conference will be held at Rethymno city in the island of Crete, Greece on April 23-27, 2023 at a time when the fusion developments are stronger than ever worldwide, boosted by the active collaboration of academic researchers and innovation partners, bringing new ideas for the exploration of innovative fusion plasma diagnostics.

The latest call for High Power Lasers is now open.

On April 20-21, 2023 the Laserlab- Europe meeting: “Network on Extreme Intensity Laser Systems” NEILS will be organized by The Centro de Láseres Pulsados (CLPU) in Salamanca.

Martin Smrz, head of the Advanced Laser Development department at the HiLASE Centre, will be attending the thirteenth instalment of the Ultrafast Optics (UFO XIII) conference taking place from the 26th to the 31st of March in San Carlos de Bariloche, Argentina.

The 13th edition of the Ultrafast Optics conference (UFO XIII) that will take place on the 26th - 31st of March 2023. The conference is planned to take place as a fully in person meeting.

A patent was awarded for "All-Optical, Optically Addressable Liquid Crystal-Based Light Valve Employing Photoswitchable Alignment Layer for High-Power and/or Large Aperture Laser Applications," based on research conducted in LLE's Optical Materials Technology (OMT) Group by Senior Research Engineer and Principal Investigator Kenneth L. Marshall and OMT Group Leader Stavros G. Demos.

The HiLASE Centre would like to invite you to participate in the annual LIDT Challenge. In this competition, we are going to test the samples of your anti-reflective coated windows. As a reward, you will gain qualified knowledge of the respective damage thresholds of your components.

At the HiLASE Centre, we offer our superb research infrastructure to other users, completely free of charge. In order to apply for the beamtime in our facility, you only need to send us your proposal via the electronic HiLASE Open Access Proposal Management System. The right time to apply is just now: the call for proposals is open from 1st March to 15th May 2023.

The 49th European Conference on Plasma Physics will be held in Bordeaux from the 3rd July to the 7th July in 2023 (Conference site: Bordeaux Congress Centre, Av. Jean Gabriel Domergue, 33300 Bordeaux). This annual conference covers the wide field of plasma physics including magnetic confinement fusion, beam plasma and inertial fusion, low temperature plasmas, and basic, space and astrophysical plasmas.

The 8th edition of the Extreme Light Infrastructure (ELI) summer school will take place August 29th to September 1st, 2023 in ELI Beamlines facility, Czech Republic.

After successful recommissioning in autumn 2022, the Greifswald nuclear fusion experiment has surpassed an important target. In 2023, an energy turnover of 1 gigajoule was targeted. Now the researchers have even achieved 1.3 gigajoules and a new record for discharge time on Wendelstein 7-X: the hot plasma could be maintained for eight minutes.

The Extreme Light Infrastructure (ELI) is pleased to announce the 2nd Joint ELI Call for Users.

The 18th International Conference on X-Ray Laser will be held at Shanghai from Jul. 17 to 21. On ICXRL latest results on state-of-the-art X-ray Free-Electron Lasers (XFEL) as well as tabletop systems are presented.

Zhi Liao's path from laser scientist to his new role as workforce manager for NIF&PS has come full circle—and is rooted in his early days at LLNL.

The Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) has seated Marc-André De Looz, a senior engineer and project manager at the U.S. Department of Energy's (DOE) Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory (PPPL), to a four-year term on its Fusion Technology Standing Committee. De Looz's election maintains a strong PPPL voice on the committee,…

FLASH v4.7 expands the range of laboratory experiments the code can model in fields including high-energy-density physics and fusion energy.

European Physical Society Plasma Physics Innovation Prize "for technological, industrial or societal applications of research in plasma physics." The call for the 2023 round of nominations for the EPS Plasma Physics Innovation Prize is open till the 15th of February, 2023.

EuPRAXIA is the first European project that develops a dedicated particle accelerator research infrastructure based on novel plasma acceleration concepts and laser technology.

The U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) and DOE's National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) today announced the achievement of fusion ignition at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL) — a major scientific breakthrough decades in the making that will pave the way for advancements in national defense and the future of clean power.

US scientists may have reached a critical milestone in generating fusion power.

Call for access to OCTOPUS and ULTRA is now open. Applications for access to the Octopus and Ultra facilities of the Central Laser Facility (CLF) in the Research Complex at Harwell are open from Friday 25th November 2022.

A record high-laser-energy NIF target shot on Sept. 19 produced about 1.2 million joules of fusion energy yield, putting NIF back on track toward ignition.

Institute of Laser Engineering (ILE), Osaka University invites applications for a full-time faculty position at the rank of Associate Professor, who can lead the development of high-energy-density science based on laser science.

The conference of high intensity laser and attosecond science in Israel will be held at Tel-Aviv from Dec. 5th to 7th. Topics covering not only ICF and X-ray sources will be discussed.

The Extreme Light Infrastructure (ELI) Joint User Meeting will take place from 2-4 November 2022 with a central Plenary Day, on 3 November 2022. The meeting will be hosted in person at the ELI Facilities, with streaming options connecting the main programme and opportunities for participants to participate in sessions at all locations.

High Energy Density Science (HEDS) Center postdoctoral fellow Andrew Longman proposes using high-intensity lasers to generate electromagnetic vortices, which have recently been observed in association with black holes.

The exciting future of inertial fusion energy, laser science, and high energy density (HED) research was highlighted at a recent conference that brought together representatives of LaserNetUS, a network of 10 ultra-powerful laser facilities LaserNetUS Logothat includes LLNL's Jupiter Laser Facility (JLF), the institutional user facility in LLNL's Physical and Life Sciences Directorate.

The 13th International Laser Operations Workshop (ILOW), held at LLNL from Aug. 30 to Sept. 1, brought together more than 70 representatives from 11 laser facilities to discuss recent achievements and share how they are responding to various challenges to improve their systems.

Photonics giant Hamamatsu and research hub Fraunhofer Institute for Laser Technology (ILT) have announced the formation of an application lab designed specifically for advanced laser material processing with ultrashort pulsed laser radiation.

Researchers at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab) have completed a major expansion of one of the world's most powerful laser systems, creating new opportunities in accelerator research for the future of high-energy physics and other fields. 

LLNL researchers and their collaborators have developed new high-energy pulse compression gratings that will be used in the world's highest-power laser system, designed to deliver up to 10 petawatts (quadrillion watts) of peak power. A petawatt is roughly the power output of the entire U.S. electrical grid.

Two physicists at the Department of Energy's (DOE) Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory (PPPL) have been named to high-level positions within DOE programs. Ahmed Diallo has become a program director focusing on fusion at the Advanced Research Projects Agency-Energy (ARPA-E), and Walter Guttenfelder is the new deputy director of the Innovation Network for Fusion Energy (INFUSE). 

Czechia-based laser research center ELI Beamlines, a division the Institute of Physics of Czech Academy of Sciences (FZU), has received funding from the Czech Foundation Agency to develop theoretical tools for modeling experiments at high-power laser facilities. And a new method for shaping matter into complex shapes, with the use of ‘twisted’ light, has been demonstrated in research at the University of Strathclyde, Glasgow, UK.

Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL) researchers have designed a compact multi-petawatt laser that uses plasma transmission gratings to overcome the power limitations of conventional solid-state optical gratings. The design could enable construction of an ultrafast laser up to 1,000 times more powerful than existing lasers of the same size.

University of Delaware researcher Arijit Bose and his collaborators have applied powerful magnetic fields to the laser-driven implosion, which may allow them to steer fusion reactions in ways previously unexplored in experiments.

US scientists evaluate their options after failing to replicate record-setting experiment from 2021.

The XFEL Physical Sciences Hub is now welcoming proposals for a third cohort of PhD studentships.The deadline for proposals is 14th September 2022.

Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL) researchers are collaborating with the French Alternative Energies and Atomic Energy Commission, known as CEA, to help develop a cryogenic target system for the CEA's LMJ. The LMJ is a laser fusion counterpart to the National Ignition Facility (NIF), now conducting experiments near Bordeaux, France.

Subject to business case approvals, the CLF's Vulcan 20-20  project (The Vulcan 20-20 will deliver a major upgrade the existing Vulcan facility at Central Laser Facility) has been awarded £59.8m by UKRI, the project will take just over 6 years starting in 2023/24 and will cost £81M in total .

The U.S. National Science Foundation and the Czech Science Foundation, or GACR, are partnering on a new collaborative project of scientists from the University of California San Diego and Extreme Light Infrastructure Beamlines in the Czech Republic which aims at demonstrating efficient generation of dense gamma-ray beams.

Christopher Deeney has been named the new director of the University of Rochester’s Laboratory for Laser Energetics, succeeding Michael Campbell, who retired in December.   He is a leader in science and innovation with extensive experience in running complex operations. We welcome Chris as the fifth Director of the University of Rochester’s Laboratory for Laser Energetics.

Improving our understanding of the physical characteristics of plutonium as it ages is a vital aspect of maintaining the reliability of the U.S. nuclear deterrent in the absence of underground testing. The recent installation of a new plutonium target fabrication facility at LLNL aims to further progress toward that goal.

A research team was able to generate polarized X-rays with unprecedented purity at the European XFEL in Hamburg. The experiments involved scientists from the Helmholtz Institute Jena, a branch of GSI, Friedrich Schiller University Jena and the Helmholtz Center Dresden-Rossendorf. The method is supposed to be used in the coming years to show that even vacuum behaves like a material under certain circumstances — a prediction from quantum electrodynamics.

ECLIM2022, the 36th European Conference on Laser Interaction with Matter will be held in Frascati, Italy on 19-23 September 2022.

The ICXRL was established to promote advanced extreme UV and X-ray sources, and their application in physics, (bio-)chemistry, and materials science. Joining ICXRL means experiencing the latest trends, and shaping the future progress. Latest results on state-of-the-art X-ray Free-Electron Lasers (XFEL) as well as tabletop systems are presented. Lecturers are expected to submit a peer-reviewed paper for the SPIE monograph.

Science and Technology Facilities Council (STFC) is investing £60 million as part of its continued support to the particle physics research community in the UK. This funding helps to keep the UK at the forefront of answering some of the biggest and most complex questions in science and supports the next generation of UK particle physicists. The latest particle physics experiment grants from STFC will fund teams from 18 UK universities to carry out world-leading particle physics research over the next three years.

The HiLASE Centre in Dolni Brezany is celebrating another success; another world record. At the end of January, the High Energy Slab Lasers scientific team managed to break their own world record on the BIVOJ laser system by 40%! Converting to the second harmonic frequency, they demonstrated 515 nm, second harmonic pulses with an energy of 95 J at a repetition rate of 10 Hz.

Advanced Photon Technologies program will develop powerful petawatt laser systems.

Professor Giubellino will continue to lead the world-class scientific program of GSI and FAIR as Scientific Managing Director of the GSI Helmholtzzentrum für Schwerionenforschung GmbH and the Facility for Antiproton and Ion Research in Europe GmbH (FAIR GmbH) for the next five years. The FAIR Council and the GSI Supervisory Board, impressed by the achievements in his first term, have expressed their wish for him to serve for a second term that started on January 1, 2022.

An optical spectrometer system based on 60 channels of fiber has been designed and employed to diagnose scattered lights from laser-plasma instabilities. The 60 fiber collectors cover an integrated solid angle of π, enabling the measurement of global energy losses in a symmetrical configuration. A detecting spectral range from ultraviolet to near-infrared, with angular distribution, allows for the understanding of the physical mechanisms involving various plasma modes. Experimental measurements of scattered lights from a conical implosion driven by high-energy nanosecond laser beams at the Shenguang-II Upgrade facility have been demonstrated, serving as reliable diagnostics to characterize laser absorption and energy losses from laser-plasma instabilities. This compact diagnostic system can provide comprehensive insights into laser energy coupling in direct-drive inertial confinement fusion research, which is essential for studying the driving asymmetry and improving the implosion efficiencies.

Optical frequency comb (OFC) technology has revolutionized the field of optics by providing precise measurement tools for light frequencies. Comprising a series of even spaced spectral lines resembling the teeth of a comb, OFCs have found widespread applications in timekeeping, precision spectroscopy, and fundamental physics. Extending this technology into the X-ray regime to achieve ultra-high precision probing of atomic and molecular structures has long been a significant challenge in the scientific community. Recently, researchers in Shanghai Advanced Research Institute, Chinese Academy of Sciences, have proposed an innovative theoretical method that utilizing the chirped frequency-beating seed laser to generate tunable X-ray frequency combs (XFCs) at the Shanghai Soft X-ray Free-Electron Laser Facility (SXFEL).

Pulse post-compression after the grating compressor has provided a promising approach for shortening the pulse duration and further enhancing the peak power of super-intense and ultrashort lasers. Although the pulse post-compression technique features undisputed merits, there are still some problems hindering its implementation, especially the small-scale self-focusing (SSSF) effect. A novel method, combining an asymmetric four-grating compressor (AFGC) with the pulse post-compression, is numerically demonstrated to improve the spatial uniformity of laser beams and hence to suppress SSSF during the beam propagation in nonlinear materials. Compared with conventional methods (such as beam self-filtering, spatial filters, etc.), this method is simple and economical, as it does not require additional components or a long spatial propagation distance.

High-power ultrafast laser sources are highly demanded in various scientific research and industrial applications. The high peak power enables these applications to be driven, while the high average power satisfies their need for high photon flux and high signal-to-noise ratio. The Yb-based CPA laser system can reach several hundred watts, and even >1 kW, thanks to the high quantum and Stokes efficiency, as well as the excellent thermal management of state-of-the-art fiber, thin-disk, and Innoslab laser architectures. Although the fiber laser cannot achieve high pulse energy output due to the smaller aperture, but it can work as an outstanding frontend owing to its robustness, excellent beam quality, and the integration of chirped fiber Bragg gratings (CFBGs) as the stretcher without misaligning like the grating stretcher. The solid-state amplifiers shine in terms of high pulse energy owing to negligible nonlinear effect and high damage threshold of critical devices, especially the Innoslab amplifier endowed with the compact configuration and high amplification factor. Hence, the Innoslab amplifier seeded by a fiber frontend provides an attractive choice for achieving a superior high-power laser system. However, there are still some drawbacks that cannot be ignored. First, the narrow gain bandwidth limits the generation of sub-100 fs ultrashort pulses, which is a common drawback of Yb-based lasers. Second, the compressed pulses always show the obvious pedestals which can be attributed to the inability of grating compressor in offsetting the higher-order dispersion mainly from fiber frontend. Finally, the output beam of Innoslab amplifier is always elliptical and accompanied with spatial distortion even after the state-of-the-art reshaping and spatial filtering.

Fusion energy is the most promising scheme to solve the future energy requirement for a sustainable development of mankind. This has also been the long-cherished dream for scientists to realize for decades. Inertial confinement fusion (ICF) is one of the potential candidates and has naturally become the main research subject for almost all fusion-class laser facilities in the world. In direct-driven ICF experiments, fuels are compressed and heated simultaneously to high density and high temperature to achieve ignition at the center of the targets. However, the entanglement of compression and heating processes has been a great challenge for a more reliable and more efficient operation of fusion power station. The double-cone ignition (DCI) scheme of ICF is proposed to address this challenge by separation of compression and heating processes, same as the fast ignition scheme. Fuel shells embedded in gold cones are firstly compressed to a high density along the isentropic path, and then accelerated to form a dense jets with high implosion velocity in the cones. Head-on collision of the plasma jets from the tips of the cones form an isochoric plasma with sharp ends in the heating direction. A relativistic electron beam guided by a B Field heats the end of the plasma to ignite the isochoric plasma.

High-power antimonide semiconductor lasers operating in the mid-infrared spectrum hold great potential for a wide range of applications, including industrial gas detection, material processing, and free-space communication. Although conventional broad-area (BA) lasers benefit from mature manufacturing processes and can deliver high output power, issues such as thermal effects and lateral carrier accumulation lead to increased lateral divergence at high current levels, degrading beam quality. This significantly limits their direct use in high-precision optical systems that demand high energy efficiency. Consequently, achieving narrow beam output while maintaining high power has become an urgent challenge to overcome.

Plasma-enhanced atomic layer deposition (PEALD) has received increasing attention in thin films for laser applications. However, owing to the diversity and wide range of process parameters, the improvement of thin film properties often requires extensive, expensive and time-consuming experiments. Back-propagation neural networks (BPNNs) with shallow structure (single or double hidden layers) have shown potential for mapping between experimental parameters and material properties, but there has yet to employ BPNNs to construct the relationship between process parameters and PEALD thin film properties. In the paper, the BPNNs with the different numbers of hidden layers are used to establish the relationship between the annealing process parameters and the properties of HfO2 thin films (refractive index, film thickness, O/Hf ratio).

The velocity interferometer system for any reflector (VISAR) coupled with a streaked optical pyrometer (SOP) has been used as a diagnostic tool in inertial confinement fusion (ICF). The VISAR diagnoses the evolution of moving surface velocity by measuring the shifted interference fringes, while the SOP analyzes the radiance temperature of a shocked thin layer by comparing the measured self-emission intensity with the brightness temperature from a standard Plankian blackbody radiator.

The generation of a flexibly modulated vortex beam with super-high topological charge is always attractive for practical applications. In addition, a high-quality vortex beam with flat-top intensity and a sharp edge is more desired for potential power amplification and optical trapping. Here, a perfect vortex beam (PVB) with topological charge as high as 140 has been realized using super-pixel wavefront shaping. To address the non-uniform intensity distribution of the obtained PVBs, a globally adaptive feedback algorithm (GAFA) based wavefront-shaping is proposed which can efficiently suppress the original intensity fluctuation. Flat-top PVB is then obtained with dramatically reduced beam speckle contrast, while the total mean intensity remains relatively stable. The GAFA based flat-top PVB generation not only alleviates the requirements for ideal incident illumination but also facilitates applications such as inertial confinement fusion and optical trapping.

The discovery of ultrafast demagnetization in Ni by Beaurepaire and co-workers opened the door to study, both theoretically and experimentally, the magnetization dynamics at the femtosecond time scale. The effect of the laser magnetic field (B-field) is typically weaker than that of the electric field (E-field), so that in most cases the laser-matter interaction is mediated by the E-field, although other techniques, such as the excitation of phononic modes have been demonstrated recently, allowing for non-thermal excitations. An appealing alternative to induce coherent magnetization dynamics consists of using intense B-fields. The magnetization response to B-fields has been extensively studied, especially in the regime of linear response to THz fields, for which a few Tesla are required to induce small deflections from the equilibrium magnetization direction. For a shorter timescale the precessional motion of the magnetization would induce a negligible deviation from the equilibrium orientation unless a very high field is applied. In that case, the response to the associated E-field, apart from being dominant, could damage the sample. Besides, although substantial advances have been performed towards the generation of electromagnetic fields in the THz range, their intensity is still small compared to those obtained in the visible/infrared spectral range.

Europe has a unique opportunity to use its knowledge in plasma physics and high-power laser technology to take the lead in promoting fusion energy driven by lasers. The recent achievement of ignition of fusion reactions and energy release in experiments at the National Ignition Facility (NIF) in the U.S. is a historical breakthrough that establishes inertial confinement fusion as a valid approach to energy production. At NIF, a laser energy of 2 MJ was used to induce the compression and heating of a spherical capsule containing 1 mg of a mixture of deuterium and tritium, thereby triggering nuclear fusion reactions which produce neutrons and alpha-particles releasing more than 3.5 MJ of fusion energy.

In inertial confinement fusion (ICF), superhot electrons, which are usually generated by stimulated Raman scattering (SRS), two-plasmon-decay (TPD) and their secondary processes, may preheat the fuel which may result in fail of ignition. In this paper, the competition process among several secondary processes of SRS is revealed, and the laser intensity is found to be the key parameter that determines the dominated process. This study provides guidance for suppressing the generation of hot electrons, as well as explaining the source of abnormal superhot electrons.

Post-acceleration of protons in helical coil (HC) targets driven by intense, ultrashort laser pulses can enhance ion energy. This scheme realizes the post-focusing and acceleration of protons, which has attracted widespread attention. Due to the challenges in maintaining synchronous acceleration, however, the current reported experimental energy gain is generally low and still cannot meet the requirements for medical applications. The research challenge lies in how to ensure stable post-acceleration of protons in HC.

Diagnosing the evolution of laser-generated High Energy Density (HED) systems is fundamental to developing a correct understanding of the behavior of matter under extreme conditions. Interferometry methods are a very powerful tool for diagnosing these systems, as they can provide valuable information about the plasma electron and ion density in a simple manner. However, current diagnostic methods mostly rely on visible radiation and thus, HED plasma probing is difficult since these plasmas are mostly opaque to visible wavelengths. Considering this, Talbot-Lau grating interferometry is a promising approach to diagnosing HED systems as it extends interferometry methods to the X-ray regime. In recent years, with the aim of imaging dense plasmas, there have been several efforts to adapt Talbot-Lau interferometry to high power laser facilities such as PALS, the Multi-TeraWatt (MTW) facility and OMEGA EP, as well as proof-of-concepts experiments at lower energy high-repetition rate lasers. A schematic drawing of a Talbot-Lau interferometer and its different components is shown in Figure 1.

In addition to the problems of beam quality degradation and mode instability caused by thermal accumulation, the phenomenon of linewidth broadening caused by amplified spontaneous radiation noise cannot be ignored when obtaining high-power narrow-linewidth lasers using traditional technical means. Furthermore, due to the defects in the atomic energy levels of the gain medium, traditional technology cannot produce narrow linewidth laser output in some special bands (2 μm). However, the optical nonlinear effects that have emerged with the development of laser technology provide a new approach for achieving narrow linewidth laser radiation at special wavelengths. Among these effects, stimulated Brillouin scattering (SBS), as a third-order nonlinear effect, has significant advantages in producing ultra-narrow linewidth lasers. By combining the fast decay mechanism of acoustic phonons in the SBS process with the strong feedback provided by the cavity, both microwave-guided Brillouin lasers and fiber Brillouin lasers can achieve narrow linewidth laser outputs that are much lower than those of conventional single-frequency lasers. However, these demonstrations based on waveguide structures also face challenges such as higher-order Stokes light generation during power boosting, which limits their ability to further increase single-frequency power.

Achieving and maintaining performance goals for high-peak-power laser systems is in part related to the ability to manufacture optical components with high laser-induced damage thresholds and maintain this performance during the operation of the system. Many factors affect the laser-induced damage performance of optics, such as material quality, optic design, and cleanliness. Extensive effort has been devoted to increase the intrinsic quality of the materials, including reducing or eliminating defects that can couple laser energy into the material. However, extrinsic defects, such as those arising from contamination in various forms, is of equal or higher importance. Ideally the optic is not subjected to any type of contamination after its manufacturing, although this is practically impossible. Contamination can arise from handling during transport and installation of the optics, which will directly impact its initial performance. In addition, contamination from the operational environment will determine the effective damage threshold of an optic throughout its lifetime. Particles located on the optics surface, especially for reflective optics, can be precursors for laser-induced damage on the optic itself or further downstream of the laser. There is a perception that the laser beam can remove such particles, also referred to as laser cleaning. However, such a "cleaning" process is not totally benign as it often leads to various types of microscale damage or modification of the optic. Once optics become damaged via this mechanism, a number of damage sites will continue to grow in size (commonly referred to as damage growth). In the case of continuous accumulation due to contamination in the operational environment and subsequent laser "cleaning" of particles on the optic, a degradation of its optical quality will follow and the laser-damage threshold will decline.

In 1979, Tajima and Dawson proposed the concept of laser wakefield acceleration (LWFA). When a strong laser is incident on the plasma, the ponderomotive force dislodges the electrons in the background plasma and then excites a wakefield to accelerate the particles. Without the breakdown voltage limitation in the plasma, the acceleration gradient ofLWFA can reach 100 GV/m, which is three orders of magnitude higher than that of the conventional radio frequency accelerator. Therefore, it is of great significance for the development of miniaturized particle accelerators and being expected to be applied to table-top free electron lasers.

The pulse duration of the free electron laser is at tens femtosecond level, which is of great significance for the study of ultrafast science such as molecule recombination or molecule vibration. However, the timescales of electron motion in molecules are on several hundred attosecond level, showing strong demands on the attosecond pulse generation. High harmonic generation provides an important tool but the relatively low pulse energy limits the application. On the other way, several schemes have been proposed based on free electron laser, including the enhanced self-amplified spontaneous emission (ESASE) scheme or the pulse-compression scheme. In those schemes, a state-of-the-art ultrashort few-cycle laser is required to modulate the electron beam, which is relatively technical challenging. In addition, the satellite radiation pulse generated in the ESASE scheme will significantly degrade the free electron lasers (FEL) performance.

Energetic proton sources driven by high power laser systems are on their way to applications in radiation biology, nuclear astrophysics and material research. Large proton numbers in very short bunch lengths are one of the particularly interesting properties of this new kind of particle acceleration which will allow research in up to now unexplored areas. For meaningful utilization, each accelerated proton bunch must be well characterized: To which energies are the protons accelerated? How large is the proton brunch? How many particles does it contain? We addressed these questions in our research group headed by Prof. Dr. Jörg Schreiber at the Center for Advanced Laser Applications (CALA) of the Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München. Our approach is: Listening to the protons.

Ultrashort laser pulses have broad spectral bandwidth, which can result in the formation of spatio-temporal couplings (STCs) that affect their behaviour. These couplings, arising from the chromatic properties of optical elements, can cause spatial and temporal changes in the pulse, such as the reduction of its peak intensity. However, deliberate manipulation of STCs can lead to unique light pulses with applications in various fields, such as laser-driven wakefield accelerators and orbital angular momentum beams. The expanding use of ultrafast laser pulses in different applications has created a demand for robust methods to measure their properties. Resolving STCs requires obtaining wavefront information over a three-dimensional hypercube of position and time (or spectra). Most existing techniques rely on scanning over one or two of the dimensions; for example, by using array sensors like CMOS cameras. However, these methods are time-consuming, unable to capture shot-to-shot variations and laser drift, and often lack resolution and spectral range. While there are some single-shot methods available, they currently suffer from low resolution, limited spectral range, and implementation challenges.

Fiber laser has the advantages of a flexible and compact system, high conversion efficiency, good beam quality, and so on, which has attracted much attention. High-power ultrafast fiber lasers have been widely applied in industrial fields and frontier science, such as advanced manufacturing, optical sensing, photoelectric countermeasure, ultrafast physics, and so on.

Advancements in high-repetition-rate laser technology are paving the way for commercialisation of laser-driven proton accelerators by producing MeV proton beams with much higher average power than previously possible. While current state-of-the-art laser systems can produce bunches of protons at up to 10 Hz, future laser systems are expected to achieve rates of 100 Hz and beyond. However, exploiting this breakthrough in laser technology also presents new challenges for laser-driven proton accelerators, in particular, precisely replenishing the target foils which are the source of the protons and are destroyed during the acceleration process. These high-repetition-rate laser systems generate pulses with less than 1 J of energy per pulse, and therefore require a final laser focusing optic which can 'tightly' focus the laser energy (f-number < 3) to achieve the 'relativistic intensities' required for proton acceleration. This tight focusing concentrates the laser energy within a diffraction-limited focal spot radius of 1.5 μm but is also associated with a very short Rayleigh range, the distance from focus at which the laser intensity will have halved from its peak value, of only 18 μm for a central wavelength of 800 nm and this necessitates very precise positioning of the target. To achieve optimal results, tape-drive targets must be able to spool at linear speeds faster than 1 m/s while maintaining better than 5 μm positional jitter. While the development of a high-stability target presents significant challenges, the potential benefit of high-frequency MeV proton beams for addressing scientific questions, and within industrial and medical applications, making this a justified endeavour.

Progress of high-power laser science enabled us to accelerate various particles through laser-plasma interactions. At present, photons, electrons, ions, and neutrons are generated by laser facilities. One of the possible applications for these laser-driven particles is the production of medial radioisotopes by a compact laser system inside of hospitals. Radioisotopes which emit gamma-rays such as 99mTc (half-life 6.02 h) and 18F (half-life 1.8 h) are used for single-photon emission computed tomography (SPECT) and position emission tomography (PET) in medical diagnostic scans. In addition, radioisotopes that radiate beta-rays or alpha-rays with half-lives of a few days could be used for cancer therapy. When the medication including such radioisotopes is administered to a patient, it is accumulated primarily in tumours and subsequently kill effectively the cancer cells by radiation of beta-rays (alpha-rays). At present, most medical radioisotopes have been provided from large facilities of nuclear reactors and accelerators, and they have been transported to hospitals. However, when medical radioisotopes can be produced in hospitals, it is possible to diagnose and treat patients in a flexible manner. In fact, a positron emitter 18F is produced by compact cyclotron accelerators located inside of hospitals and used for PET, because 18F which could be effectively produced by proton-induced nuclear reactions and small proton accelerators has been realized.

The wide-area precise control of laser is a long-standing goal that people have been striving for it. Mechanical beam deflectors, such as Gimbals, fast steering mirrors, Risley prisms and other devices, can meet people's needs in general situations, despite their drawbacks of large mass, large inertia, and easy wear. However, with the miniaturization trend of the scanning system, non-mechanical beam deflectors that are more lightweight and durable are gaining more and more popularity. Currently, non-mechanical deflectors, such as liquid crystal optical phased array (LCOPA), liquid crystal prism, electro-optic deflector, micro-lens array, etc., have been developed with their own unique performance and advantages separately. However, most of them achieve only small-angle deflection. Especially in high-energy laser systems, angle deflectors that withstand hundreds of watts or even kilowatts of power are hard to achieve large-angle beam deflection. For instance, LCOPA could withstand continuous laser irradiation of hundreds of watts, but it exhibits a significant efficiency decline when the deflection angle is too large (±5°). Therefore, using an angle amplifier to magnify the deflection angle becomes an effective solution to cope with the insufficient deflection angle. Volume Bragg grating (VBG) based on photo-thermal refractive glass has good high-power working characteristics, a high damage threshold, and excellent environmental stability. Moreover, it can realize large-angle amplification for multiple incident angles by multiplexing and cascading, making it one of the excellent candidates for angle amplifier.

The research fields related to high-power, single-frequency fiber lasers at 1.5 μm for coherent detection applications have rapidly expanded in recent years due to eye-safe properties and low transmission loss in the atmosphere and optical fiber. The laser power is limited by the Yb-Er energy transfer bottlenecking in Er-Yb co-doped fiber and the stimulated Brillouin scattering (SBS) in fiber when it is typically pumping by a 9XX nm diode laser. Direct pumping in the Er absorption band at 1480 nm is an effective way to avoid the bottlenecking problem and the high absorption in the fiber core reduces the length of the gain fiber, which increases the threshold of SBS.

Ultra-intense femtosecond laser facilities with a focusing intensity reaching 1023 W/cm2 have been generated in laboratories, which become powerful tools for the investigation of laser-matter interaction in the relativistic and even ultra-relativistic regimes. Temporal contrast is one of the most important parameters for such ultra-intense laser facilities since the pre-pulse or amplified spontaneous emission (ASE) with intensity higher than 1011 W/cm2 will ionize the target materials and affect the laser-plasma interaction experiments.

Light with spiral phases, known as optical vortex, can carry orbital angular momentum (OAM), and is widely applied in microscale matter manipulation, microscopy, optical communication, intense laser interaction with materials, and so on. With the development of ultrashort and ultra-high power lasers, whose vortex versions have drawn significant attention. However, the existing high-energy-flux mode-converter, large size reflective phase-plate installed at the end of the laser, suffers from expensive cost, low spatial resolution, limited damage threshold, and is disturbed by topological charge dispersion which can degrade the vortex quality. Broadband mode-converter, e.g. Q-plate (a half waveplate with the optical axis rotating with azimuth), can realize broadband mode conversion but the energy flux is limited by its small manufacturable size.

Laser damage to mirror coatings caused by nodule defects is one of the bottlenecks limiting further increases in output power of high-power laser facilities. Nodule defects grow from particles on the substrate surface or particles generated during the coating deposition process into inverted cones with domed tops, resulting in unwanted localized electric (E)-field enhancement and coating layer discontinuities. The micro-lens model and angular-dependent transmission model suggest that localized E-field enhancement can lead to nodule ejection under laser irradiation. Due to the diversity of seed sources, nodules are unavoidable in laser coatings. Traditionally, laser conditioning and nodule planarization methods are used to reduce the adverse effects of nodule defects. However, laser conditioning produces plasma scalds and nodule-ejected pits; nodule planarization is limited to ion-beam sputtering deposition, not e-beam evaporation – a technique especially suitable for large, high-power laser optics.

A high-repetition rate single-longitudinal-mode laser with sub-nanosecond pulse width and high pulse energy is promising for applications in the fields of fast ignition lasing radiation, space debris detection, LIDAR Thomson scattering diagnosis, etc. Stimulated Brillouin scattering (SBS) is a simple and efficient pulse compression technology that can compress long nanosecond pulses with high energy to sub-nanosecond pulses. In SBS pulse compression, the liquid medium used for Brillouin scattering has the advantages of low pressure, a small absorption coefficient, and a high laser damage threshold compared with gas and solid media, and is most suitable for SBS with high injection energies and long interaction distances. Therefore, SBS pulse compression based on the liquid medium is the most promising technical method for obtaining a high-energy sub-nanosecond laser with a kilohertz-level repetition rate. However, most of the work in this field has focused on SBS pulse compression characteristics for xenon lamp pumped lasers, whose laser repetition rates are generally low (below tens of hertz). Few studies have focused on high-repetition rate SBS pulse compression based on a liquid medium. Therefore, one goal of researchers is to maximize the operating repetition rate of SBS pulse compression based on the liquid medium with a stable output.

During the past decade, parallel with the considerable advances of laser materials and laser technologies, several PW-class lasers have been built in the world. These systems allow the envisioning of extreme light applications, such as high field physics, particle acceleration to relativistic velocity, and medical applications. Producing extreme laser intensity on the target is the main objective of PW laser systems. Both in the temporal and the spatial domain, these systems need to meet strict requirements to assure high-quality, high contrast pulses, focused to nearly diffraction-limited spots. However, the temporal and spatial domains are not totally separated in ultra-short PW lasers. The induced space–time/spectral coupling effects are very specific features that could dramatically impact the targeted laser intensity even for the most carefully designed systems.

Porous materials, also known as foams, have a non-trivial internal structure, constituted by randomly arranged solid parts, which can be filaments or membranes, separated by empty spaces. These materials have a wide range of application in the laser-plasma interaction experiments. They are used for the study of equations of stateand shockwaves, for increasing the efficiency of absorption of laser energy and of its conversion into X-rays, as bright neutron sources and to enhance electron acceleration by short laser pulses.

Due to high conversion efficiency, robustness, easy thermal management and excellent beam quality, single-mode high-power fiber lasers have been developed for a wide variety of applications, such as industry, science and defense. In the past two decades, the large-mode-area (LMA) double-cladding gain fibers and high-brightness semiconductor laser diodes lead to an exponential evolution on the output power of the single-mode fiber lasers. However, the evolution is suffering from a sudden halt due to mode degradation phenomena.

High-intensity lasers provide a unique source of energy and are the key components in a variety of applications, ranging from scientific research to industry and medicine. To reach very high pulse intensities, laser light is typically focused to a small point in space. After focus, the pulse expands and its intensity decreases due to pulse diffraction. However, some applications such as laser wakefield acceleration require laser pulses to remain intense over an extended length. A new development led by Berkeley Lab scientist Marlene Turner expands the reach of this field. The related research results are published on High Power Laser Science and Engineering, Vol.9, Issue 2, 2021 (M. Turner, A. J. Gonsalves, S. S. Bulanov, et al. Radial density profile and stability of capillary discharge plasma waveguides of lengths up to 40 cm[J]. High Power Laser Science and Engineering, 2021, 9(2): 02000e17).

The generation of ultrashort pulses implies a large bandwidth, increasing complexity of the beam propagation, and diagnostics to fully characterize the final pulse in the spatial-temporal domain. The angular dispersion (AD) of the beam is one of the spatial-temporal couplings (STC) playing a key role in a wide range of scientific areas. The presence of this chromatic aberration will distort the laser pulse, causing pulse front tilt. In turn, when the beam is focused, the actual pulse length in the focal spot is different from the pulse length in the near field, where usually is measured.

As an attractive collector medium for hypervelocity particles, combined with outstanding physical properties and suitable compositional characteristics, silica aerogel has been proved as an ideal capture media for space debris, interplanetary dust and shock-loaded fragments (highly transparent, low-density, highly porous, etc.), which can capture the hypervelocity particles efficiently and nondestructively. On the one hand, silica aerogel capture cells had been deployed in space missions and many researches focusing on the captured particles and track had been done. On the other hand, numerous efforts of modeling and experimental approaches were concluded to estimate the conditions of impact in aerogel. Hörz classified the diverse aerogel track shapes into three broad types (A, B, and C), In addition to straight path, track curvature was exhibited at the result of ground experiment in the available reports. The gently curving carrot-shaped -tracks observed in aerogel was assigned as being due to irregular shape of projectile. That is closer to the actual situation that many space debris have irregular shapes. However, till now, there is almost no complete understanding of the impact behaviors and typical track morphology of irregular particles. Thus, it is worthwhile to analyze track morphology of hypervelocity irregular grains in silica aerogel.

Magnetic reconnection (MR) is a dissipation process of magnetic field energy accompanied with the topological variation of magnetic field lines. Such the idea was first proposed to explain the production of high energy particles in space. The astrophysical observations and investigations in the past 70 years prove that MR participates various processes such as solar flare, coronal mass ejections, gamma-ray bursts and pulsar winds. MR also plays important roles in laboratory plasmas on fusion instabilities. In the toroidal fusion devices such as Tokamaks, the plasmas tend to relax to a quasi-stationary state via the global magnetic self-organization based on MR process. In the recent years, one of the popular topics is MR driven by laser-plasma interaction. With the development of high power laser, MR environment transits from collisional to collisionless plasmas and the corresponding time scale decreases from nanosecond to femto-second. In such the case, the resistive MHD approximation and the general Ohm's law should be reconsidered.

The mid-infrared wavelength ranges from 2 to 15 μm is of great interest for many interesting applications such as remote sensing and free-space optical communications, but this spectral range has not been fully explored due to the lack of laser sources. In particular, the 3-8 μm range is called of the "molecular fingerprint" region because of the abundant absorption lines from almost most chemicals. These molecular fingerprints are very useful for chemical sensing in combination with broadband or tunable mid-infrared laser beams.

Photoionized plasma is an important existing form of plasmas in the universe. Celestial objects, such as AGN and X-ray binary, can emit strong radiation field and the high energy photos can ionize the surrounding gases. Thus, the low temperature gases can emit lines of highly ionized ions. The He-α lines are important method to diagnose the electron temperature and density of photoionized plasmas. As the development of the high energy density physics, the photoionized plasmas have been produced in the laboratories. In 2009, Fujioka et al. used the GEKKO-XII laser facility to produce photoionized silicon plasma. The experimental spectrum, the black solid line in Figure 1, is similar as that of Vela X-1, which is a typical X-ray binary. To simulate and illustrate the experimental spectrum is always a difficult problem, where the peak around 1855 eV (intercombination line) is always absent in the simulations.

Targets are physical base of laser inertial confinement fusion (ICF) research, whose quality has extremely important influences on the reliability and degree of precision for subsequent ICF experimental results. At present, the degradable mandrel technique with poly-α-methylstyrene (PAMS) degradation as the core has become one of the key technologies for fabricating ICF target. Its general process can be divided into three steps: first, hollow PAMS microspheres are prepared as mandrel, then plasma vapor deposition technology is used to prepare a coating (glow discharge polymer, GDP) with higher thermal stability on the surface, and finally PAMS are degraded leaving the hollow GDP target. Although many reports have been devoted to the related process, there are still two key problems in the actual preparation of GDP, that is, how to reduce the thermal degradation temperature of PAMS and how to avoid residues in PAMS degradation. Considering that the general nature of degradation corresponds to the breaking of chemical bonds, it is urgent to grasp the physical laws of the complex degradation process of PAMS at the atomic level and construct the reliable model of mandrel degradation.

An optical frequency comb can be used as an optical ruler for the measurement of absolute optical frequencies. The precision of spectroscopy has been revolutionized using comb technology. To improve the comb spectroscopy sensitivity, using mid-infrared combs has become popular in recent years because of strong vibrational absorption in the mid-infrared region.

The interaction of relativistic laser pulses with nanostructured targets has stimulated considerable interest because of its practical applications in laser-driven particle acceleration, high-brightness ultra-fast hard X-ray, cancer treatment, fast ignition in inertial confinement fusion, etc. Some experimental and simulation results indicate that the interaction of the intense laser pulse with a nanostructured target can significantly increase the production of the high-quality fast electrons and improve the laser energy absorption. The structured targets include nanowire targets, nanostructured "velvet" targets, multihole targets, and nanotubes. Among them, the performance of the nanowire target is very prominent. The nanowire arrays can greatly improve the laser energy absorption and the generation of mega-ampere relativistic electron beams. Experiments and simulations have shown that very strong magnetic fields (about 100 MG) are produced within the nanowire arrays. It is worth noting that the self-generated magnetic field plays an important role in both the production and the transport of the fast electrons. Therefore, it is of great significance to study the generation mechanism of the self-generated magnetic field produced in the nanowire target when a ultra-intense laser pulse interacts with a nanowire target.

Diode-pumped solid-state (DPSS) lasers have made great progress in the past decades. One of the enduring obstacles that DPSS have faced is the restriction from high thermal gradients and aberration under intense pumping conditions. However, with the face cooling configuration of a thin, disk-shaped active medium, the diode-pumped architecture allows building high output power solid-state lasers with excellent spatial beam quality and high conversion efficiency. Since then, thin disk lasers with high power have attracted attention because of their various applications in the material processing industry. Research conducted on high-power thin disk lasers has primarily focused on the Yb:YAG, because it exhibits considerably lower thermal loading factor and broad bandwidth for short pulse output. However, Yb:YAG require a high-pump density to reach the threshold, and are intrinsically sensitive to temperature due to their quasi-three-level nature. The spectroscopic parameters of the Nd-doped materials are superior to those of the Yb-doped materials. Among the Nd doped materials, Nd:YVO4 offers several advantages: a large stimulated emission cross section at 1064 nm, linearly polarized emissions, broad absorption bandwidth, and high absorption cross section at 808 nm pump wavelength, which is particularly advantageous for reducing passes of the pump radiation to achieve efficient absorption. Improvement of absorption efficiency is typically achieved by multi-pass pumping scheme. However, this complicated and expensive multi-pass pumping architecture is not desirable for many applications. Therefore, studying a simple structure of Nd:YVO4 thin disk laser is of great significance for practical applications.

KDP (KH2PO4) and its isomorphs, DKDP (KDxH2-xPO4) are the only available nonlinear crystals used as electro-optical switches and frequency converters for inertial confinement fusion (ICF) systems on account of their particular properties.

Significant advances on ultra-intense and ultra-short laser technology have led numerous laboratories around the world to develop table-top PW-class laser systems as a means of investigating laser-matter interactions in relativistic regime. The repetition rate of PW-class femtosecond lasers is an important issue for their practical applications. And the development of repetitive PW-class lasers has attracted a great attention in recent years.

The transport of high-current relativistic electron beams driven by ultraintense laser interactions with plasmas is relevant to many applications of high energy density physics, particularly in areas of the fast ignition scheme for inertial confinement fusion, laser-driven ion acceleration and production of ultrashort radiation sources. A target can be ionized by relativistic electrons both through field ionization and collisional ionization, inducing nonlinear and collective effects that can feed back to the transport of relativistic electrons. It is important to comprehensively investigate the transport process of relativistic electrons in such a target, especially in insulators that are without free electrons initially.

Burst-mode picosecond green lasers with a high pulse energy and high average power have important applications in many fields. One of the most promising applications is space debris laser ranging. Due to the sharp increase in space debris (also known as space trash), monitoring and early warning of space debris have attracted considerable attention worldwide owing to a dramatic increase in space garbage, which poses a serious threat to spacecraft operation and human space activities. Moreover, space debris laser ranging technology not only enables real-time space debris orbit measurement with high precision (one or two orders of magnitude higher than that of other ground-based observation equipment), but also provides calibration for other monitoring methods. The use of lasers with a pulse duration of 100 ps can afford improved ranging precision owing to their narrow pulse duration; in addition, their pulses are longer than femtosecond pulses, enabling the detector to respond. Because the laser beam is diffusely reflected by space debris, however, a higher laser pulse energy is needed for the detector to capture the reflected photons. As the pulse energy increases, smaller and more distant space debris can be measured, and raising the repetition rate of the laser shortens the time interval between adjacent diffusely reflected pulses, improving the speed of target acquisition. A recent study showed that using a double-pulse picosecond laser for tracking space debris increases the ranging precision of laser space debris measurement from the decimeter level to the centimeter level. Besides, due to the sub-pulse interval in the burst is short, it is easy to increase the repetition frequency of sub-pulse in the burst to the GHz-level without seriously affecting the conditions of each pulse energy, and it also has obvious advantages in the fields of precision machining and scientific research.

A proposed method could detect vortex states of high-energy particles through a scattering phenomenon called a superkick.

Scientists at the European XFEL and DESY produce high-power attosecond X-ray pulses at megahertz repetition rates

Lead by Slava Smartsev of LOA's APPLI group and Aaron Liberman of the Weizmann Institute of Science, Israel, a novel and technically straightforward approach has been developed for the measurement of the spectrally resolved wavefront of an ultrashort laser pulse.

The APPLI group at LOA is focusing on developing a high-repetition-rate (kHz) laser-plasma accelerator. They are using the terawatt laser in Salle Noire 2, delivering pulses of 4 fs and a few milli-joules, focused on a continuously flowing gas target. In a new paper published in Physical Review Research, they report on their latest work, examining in detail the influence of the nature of the gas on the accelerator's performance.

Researchers at ETH Zurich have developed a laser that produces the strongest ultra-short laser pulses to date. In the future, such high-power pulses could be used for precision measurements or materials processing.

Hiroshi Sawada, an associate professor in the Department of Physics at the University of Nevada, Reno, along with his colleagues at several international institutions, has developed a method to track how material heats and cools after a laser pulse has been fired.

HZDR team presents new method to simulate cosmic conditions

HZDR-Team presents new diagnostic tool for laser-plasma accelerator

In a new publication, researchers of LOA's F-ILM group now demonstrate an extension of the superfilamentation length of a focused terawatt laser beam using a specially designed multifocal phase mask. They also demonstrate in the laboratory the ability of these extended filaments to guide electric discharges and optical signals over distances 2 or 3 times longer than a classical filament.

Researchers at the Centre for Advanced Laser Applications have made a significant advance in the optimization and control of laser wakefield accelerators (LWFAs) using artificial intelligence techniques. This development could make these compact particle accelerators more accessible and easier to operate for a wide range of scientific and medical applications.

In an inspiring collaborative effort between researchers from the Central Laser Facility (CLF) and various international institutions, plasmas commonly found in and around extreme astrophysical objects have finally been produced in the laboratory.

Researchers from ATAP have demonstrated an innovative technique for boosting the energy of an intense ion beam.

A new technique shortens electron bunches in storage rings to produce more powerful, coherent synchrotron radiation, akin to high-power lasers. This method has been successfully tested, marking progress toward a novel type of radiation source that could have significant impacts on materials research.

Dr. Andreas Döpp, Emmy Noether Group Leader and Lecturer at LMU Munich, has co-authored a perspective article featured on the cover of APL Photonics' July 2024 issue.

Experiments at European XFEL generate states of matter close to what occurs in the interior of planets or in the imploding capsule of an inertial fusion reactor. At the same time, they open up a way to measure ultra-short phenomena.

Nature Photonics-Meeting Report highlighted the LFEX laser results as one of three major light-related talks at the 71st Spring Meeting of the Japan Society of Applied Physics in March 2024.

A team of LLNL researchers has made advancements in understanding and resolving the long-standing “drive-deficit” problem in indirect-drive inertial confinement fusion (ICF) experiments. This discovery could pave the way for more accurate predictions and improved performance in fusion energy experiments at NIF.

Researchers at European XFEL have developed an innovative method to study warm dense matter with unprecedented accuracy. This kind of matter, that exists between condensed matter and plasma physics, can be found, for example, in astrophysical objects or is created during inertial confinement fusion.

Researchers at the University of Oxford's Department of Physics have taken a step closer to demonstrating a new generation of high-repetition-rate laser-driven particle accelerators. These compact accelerators could drive myriad applications in science, medicine, and industry.

HZDR team achieves new energy record for next generation proton accelerators

Many advances in structural science since the 1970s were made by probing materials with synchrotron radiation: that is, high energy X-rays generated through accelerating high-energy electrons. The latest generation of such sources, X-ray free electron lasers (XFEL), are far more powerful than their predecessors but are only accessible to international consortia and a few rich countries because of their high cost.

Researchers from the Centre for Advanced Laser Applications have developed a novel approach that combines multi-objective and multi-fidelity optimization, which could significantly speed up the optimization of complex systems like laser-plasma accelerators. The work, recently published in IOP Machine Learning: Science and Technology, introduces the innovative use of a trust metric to facilitate the joint optimization of multiple objectives and data sources.

The direct laser acceleration (DLA) of electrons in underdense plasmas can provide hundreds of nC of electrons accelerated to near-GeV energies using currently available lasers. Here we demonstrate the key role of electron transverse displacement in the acceleration and use it to analytically predict the expected maximum electron energies. The energy scaling is shown to be in agreement with full-scale quasi-3D particle-in-cell simulations of a laser pulse propagating through a preformed guiding channel and can be directly used for optimizing DLA in near-future laser facilities. The strategy towards optimizing DLA through matched laser focusing is presented for a wide range of plasma densities paired with current and near-future laser technology. Electron energies in excess of 10 GeV are accessible for lasers at I ∼ 1021 W / cm2.

In two newly published articles in Nature Physics, LLE Assistant Scientist Varchas Gopalaswamy and recent graduate Connor Williams ('23 PhD), now a staff scientist at Sandia National Laboratories, share their results from recent experiments on the OMEGA Laser System that demonstrate the potential for a simplified and more-efficient method of designing future "direct-drive" method for generating fusion energy.

LLE is excited to announce the release of the first issue of LLE in Focus, a new quarterly magazine-style publication that shines the spotlight on the accomplishments, technological advances, and cutting-edge research performed at the Laboratory.

Researchers at The Extreme Light Infrastructure ERIC in Czechia and Osaka University in Japan recently uncovered a surprising transition that takes place during interactions between intense laser pulses and plasma mirrors. This transition, marked by an anomalous emission of coherent XUV radiation, was outlined in a paper published in Physical Review Letters.

Is it possible to create a femtosecond laser entirely from glass? That's the rabbit hole that Yves Bellouard, head of EPFL's Galatea Laboratory, went down after years of spending hours – and hours – aligning femtosecond lasers for lab experiments.

In new experiments at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory's National Ignition Facility, scientists measured the extended X-ray absorption fine structure (EXAFS) of copper to probe its temperature under extreme pressure. The research appears in the journal Nature Communications.

A new method for compressing laser pulses to ultrahigh powers based on spatially varying dispersion of an inhomogeneous plasma. The research is published in the journal Nature Photonics.

An international team of scientists at DESY and European XFEL has demonstrated a device to significantly increase the amount of X-rays with sharply defined wavelengths generated by an X-ray laser at high repetition rates. The novel cascaded setup opens up new experimental possibilities in a wide range of scientific fields employing ultrafast X-ray spectroscopy, scattering and imaging techniques.

A team of researchers has been using machine learning to teach a compact particle accelerator to produce customised beams for a number of different applications. This technique expands the conceivable range of applications for so-called laser-plasma accelerators, innovative compact next-generation accelerators that are currently under development.

New method improves proton acceleration with high power laser.

Researchers at the University of Rochester's Laboratory for Laser Energetics (LLE) have, for the first time, experimentally demonstrated a method called dynamic shell formation, which may help achieve the goal of creating a fusion power plant.

A new experimental platform on NIF promises to deliver precise measurements of the characteristics of warm dense matter, which is present in the interior of planets and ICF experiments.

By combining pulses from multiple lasers, ATAP researchers have created record short pulses that could enable next-generation particle accelerators and colliders.

ATAP Researchers have used the HiRES beamline to develop a new diagnostics tool for enhancing the capabilities of ultrafast electron diffraction—a powerful technique that promises breakthroughs in scientific research.

The team of the HiLASE Centre has just published a paper entitled “Faraday isolator for 100J/10Hz pulsed laser” in the Optics Letters journal. 

A team of scientists led by Andreas Döpp at LMU Munich's PULSE laboratory have recently published two papers that detail innovative methods …

LLNL physicist Pierre Michel has authored a newly published textbook on laser-plasma interactions that is being called "indispensable" for graduate students and researchers.

An international research team conducted experiments at NIF that offer important implications for astrophysics and nuclear fusion research.

Chinese authors Deng Pan and Hongxing Xu collaborated on a paper published in the journal Physical Review Letters.

Artemis, one of the Central Laser Facility's facilities, has published it's first paper further to its move to Research Complex.

HiLASIANS Venkatesan Jambunathan, Martin Smrz, and Tomáš Mocek collaborated on a paper published in the Applied Physics B: Lasers and optics journal.

By creating secondary "ghost" beams to stabilize high-power lasers, ATAP researchers have laid the foundations for new applications of plasma-based accelerators.

Jana Schaber from the Helmholtz-Zentrum Dresden-Rossendorf (HZDR) has researched a novel photocathode that could make the ELBE high-power radiation source even more powerful, energy-efficient and sustainable.

HiLASIANS Thibault J. -Y. Derrien (team leader of Ultrafast Photonics), Yoann Levy (team leader of Laser Material Processing and deputy head of Scientific Laser Applications), and Nadezhda M. Bulgakova (head of Scientific Laser Applications) are the authors of the introductory chapter of Ultrafast Laser Nanostructuring.

Scientists have used a common weather forecasting technique for insights into how powerful lasers turn hunks of solid material into soups of electrically charged particles known as plasmas. 

In collaboration with researchers from Madrid and Prague, scientists from LOA's FLUX group have demonstrated experimentally for the first time the ability to control the group velocity of a high intensity (> 10^18 W/cm²) laser pulse in a plasma thanks to spatio-temporal couplings which generate the so-called 'flying focus effect'.

Accurate and fast calculation of heat flow (heat transport) due to fluctuations and turbulence in plasmas is an important issue in elucidating the physical mechanisms of fusion reactors and in predicting and controlling their performance.

In a major breakthrough in the fields of nanophotonics and ultrafast optics, a Sandia National Laboratories research team has demonstrated the ability to dynamically steer light pulses from conventional, so-called incoherent light sources.

A new way to create high-energy ions could speed up their applications in treating cancer and probing the fundamental nature of matter.

Ice-cold electron beams simulated in research at the University of Strathclyde could pave the way to reducing X-ray free-electron lasers (X-FELs) to a fraction of their current size.

High-power lasers now create record-high numbers of electron-positron pairs, opening exciting opportunities to study extreme astrophysical processes, such as black holes and gamma-ray bursts.

A novel method for controlling combined-beam laser pulses could pave the way for smaller, more capable particle accelerators and colliders.

This paper reports on the experimental results obtained on OMEGA EP, where the direct measurement of accelerated nonthermal electrons from magnetically driven reconnection at low β (ratio of plasma pressure to magnetic pressure ~ 0.05) were measured.

As laser technology has developed over the past couple of decades, interest in laser-driven ion acceleration has increased. One promising mechanism of laser-driven ion acceleration is Radiation Pressure Acceleration (RPA).

HiLase's researchers Yoann Levy, Jaroslav Huynh, Martin Cimrman and Martin Smrž together with other researchers from Centre for Plasma Physics (UK), ELI and Faculty of Nuclear Sciences and Physical Engineering at CTU have recently published a paper in the journal of Applied Sciences (MDPI). The topic of the paper is TOF Analysis of Ions Accelerated at High Repetition Rate from Laser-Induced Plasma.

Extremely intense light pulses generated by free-electron lasers (FELs) are versatile tools in research. Particularly in the X-ray range, they can be deployed to analyze the details of atomic structures of a wide variety of materials and to follow fundamental ultrafast processes with great precision. Until now, FELs such as the European XFEL in Germany are based on conventional electron accelerators, which make them long and expensive. An international team led by Synchrotron SOLEIL, France, and Helmholtz-Zentrum Dresden-Rossendorf (HZDR), Germany, has now achieved a breakthrough on the way to an affordable alternative solution: they were able to demonstrate seeded FEL lasing in the ultraviolet regime based on a still young technology – laser-plasma acceleration. In the future, this might allow to build more compact systems, which would considerably expand the possible applications of FELs. The research collaboration presents their results in the journal Nature Photonics (DOI: 10.1038/s41566-022-01104-w).

Joint theoretical and experimental x-ray spectroscopy research on how radiation is generated and transported in dense plasmas, led by Suxing Hu and Philip Nilson, provides new insight into the behavior of atoms at extreme conditions.

X-ray diffraction measurements under laser-driven dynamic compression allow researchers to investigate the atomic structure of matter at hundreds of thousands of atmospheres of pressure and temperatures of thousands of degrees, with broad implications for condensed matter physics, planetary science and astronomy.

Type-I ELM plasma instabilities can melt the walls of fusion devices. A team of researchers from the Max Planck Institute for Plasma Physics (IPP) and the Vienna University of Technology (TU Wien) found a way to get them under control. Their work is published in the journal Physical Review Letters.

Physicists at the U.S. Department of Energy's (DOE) Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory (PPPL) have proposed the source of the sudden and puzzling collapse of heat that precedes disruptions that can damage doughnut-shaped tokamak fusion facilities. Coping with the source could overcome one of the most critical challenges that future fusion facilities will face and bring closer to reality the production on Earth of the fusion energy that drives the sun and stars.

An international team of scientists has uncovered a new method for advancing the development of fusion energy through increased understanding of the properties of warm dense matter, an extreme state of matter similar to that found at the heart of giant planets like Jupiter. The findings, led by Sophia Malko of the U.S. Department of Energy's (DOE) Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory (PPPL), detail a new technique to measure the "stopping power" of nuclear particles in plasma using high repetition-rate ultraintense lasers. The understanding of proton stopping power is particularly important for inertial confinement fusion (ICF).

On the one-year anniversary of achieving a yield of more than 1.3 megajoules at LLNL's National Ignition Facility, the scientific results of this record experiment have been published in three peer-reviewed papers: one in Physical Review Letters and two in Physical Review E.  

The IEEE Nuclear and Plasma Sciences Society (NPSS) announced a Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL) team as the winner of its 2022 Transactions on Plasma Science (TPS) Best Paper Award for their work applying machine learning to inertial confinement fusion (ICF) experiments.

On 1 August, the Korea Institute of Fusion Energy (KFE) announced that a new fusion simulation code was developed to project and analyze the TAE. In TAE, instabilities occur in the course of interactions between fast ions and the perturbed magnetic fields surrounding them. It disturbs a tokamak's plasma confinement by disengaging fast ions from the plasma core.  

In the paper published on High Power Laser Science and Engineering 10, E21 (2022), the authors show the methods used and the results obtained during the first 10 PW peak power laser demonstration in the world.

Sanin Zulic and Sunil Pathak shared their knowledge on how laser shock peening (LSP) can be used to improve residual stresses in additively manufactured parts. In their article in Laser Systems/Europe they describe LSP as an excellent solution for improving AM parts for applications that require high-quality parts, either because of technical requirements or safety reasons. 

Research from Prof. Borghesi’s group in the Centre for Plasma Physics has been profiled in the January 2022 issue of Physics Today, magazine published by the American Physical Society.

An international team led by Oxford Physics, University of Rochester, and University of Chicago scientists was able to unravel the inner workings of heat conduction in the largest structures in the universe known as clusters of galaxies. These clusters are made of thousands of galaxies, bound together by gravity. Most matter in galaxy clusters is in the form of tenuous ionized gas (called plasma) that is threaded by magnetic fields and is in a turbulent state. In observing many of these clusters of galaxies, astronomers have been facing a difficult conundrum: they all appear much hotter than expected.

Submission Open: 21 May 2024; Submission Deadline: 15 September 2024

Bivoj/DiPOLE100 laser system is Yb:YAG kilowatt nanosecond multi slab laser system operating at cryogenic temperatures. It can generate 2-14 ns arbitrarily shaped pulses with energy up to 146 J at 10 Hz repetition rate at wavelength 1030 nm.

Since its launch in 2013, High Power Laser Science and Engineering (HPLSE) has now been published for 10 years. Supported by the founding Co-Editors-in-Chief Zunqi Lin and Colin Danson, the subsequent Co-Editor-in-Chief Jianqiang Zhu and other extraordinary Editorial Board members, HPLSE rapidly obtained its reputation in the high power laser community. So far, more than 450 papers from 430 institutions in 32 countries have been published in HPLSE. We appreciate the contributions made by authors and reviewers, which have led to the continued success of our journal. HPLSE is now one of the most important journals in the field of high power lasers.

The article entitled "Reflecting petawatt lasers off relativistic plasma mirrors: a realistic path to the Schwinger limit" was selected as the 2021 High Power Laser Science and Engineering Editor-in-Chief Choice Award paper.

Original manuscripts are sought to the special issue on "Relativistic Laser Plasma Interaction (RLPI) Diagnostics and Instrumentation" of High Power Laser Science and Engineering (HPL).

Original manuscripts are sought to the special issue on "Future Control Systems and Machine Learning at High Power Laser Facilities" of High Power Laser Science and Engineering (HPL),

Special Issue on Inertial Confinement Fusion

The article entitled "Laser produced electromagnetic pulses: generation, detection and mitigation" was selected as the 2020 High Power Laser Science and Engineering Editor-in-Chief Choice Award paper.

The Conference Chairs are currently soliciting high-profile papers to organize a special issue for The 4th International Symposium on High Power Laser Science and Engineering (HPLSE 2021). We sincerely invite you to contribute a research article or a review. We hope that the special issue can be useful and meaningful resource to the community and that your paper will be an important part of the special issue. The papers will be fully peer reviewed and not a formal set of conference proceedings and therefore the scope for paper content is not limited to that presented at the conference.

Original manuscripts are sought to the special issue on X-ray Free Electron Lasers (XFELs) of High Power Laser Science and Engineering (HPL).

High Power Laser Science and Engineering is pleased to announce a special issue on Target Fabrication. The scope of this special issue is to highlight important new results and the latest developments related to target fabrication and reviews on topics related to their deployment on ultra-high-energy/power laser facilities.

The article entitled “Technology development for ultraintense all-OPCPA systems” was selected as the 2019 High Power Laser Science and Engineering Editor-in-Chief Choice Award paper.

Bright X-rays and applications

High power terahertz sources and applications

Laser driven electron and ion acceleration

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Bright X-rays and applications

Bremsstrahlung emission from high power laser interactions with constrained targets for industrial radiography

C. D. Armstrong, C. M. Brenner, C. Jones, D. R. Rusby, Z. E. Davidson, Y. Zhang, J. Wragg, S. Richards, C. Spindloe, P. Oliveira, M. Notley, R. Clarke, S. R. Mirfayzi, S. Kar, Y. Li, T. Scott, P. McKenna, D. Neely.

High Power Laser Science and Engineering, 2019, 7(2): 02000e24

 

X-ray computed tomography of adhesive wicking into carbon foam

Sav Chima.

High Power Laser Science and Engineering, 2017, 5(4): 04000e28

 

 

High power terahertz sources and applications

Study of backward terahertz radiation from intense picosecond laser-solid interactions using a multichannel calorimeter system

H. Liu, G.-Q. Liao, Y.-H. Zhang, B.-J. Zhu, Z. Zhang, Y.-T. Li, G. G. Scott, D. Rusby, C. Armstrong, E. Zemaityte, P. Bradford, N. Woolsey, P. Huggard, P. McKenna, D. Neely.

High Power Laser Science and Engineering, 2019, 7(1): 010000e6

 

 

Laser driven electron and ion acceleration

Polarized proton beams from laser-induced plasmas

Anna Hützen, Johannes Thomas, Jürgen Böker, Ralf Engels, Ralf Gebel, Andreas Lehrach, Alexander Pukhov, T. Peter Rakitzis, Dimitris Sofikitis, Markus Büscher.

High Power Laser Science and Engineering, 2019, 7(1): 01000e16

 

Monoenergetic proton beam accelerated by single reflection mechanism only during hole-boring stage

Wenpeng Wang, Cheng Jiang, Shasha Li, Hao Dong, Baifei Shen, Yuxin Leng, Ruxin Li, Zhizhan Xu.

High Power Laser Science and Engineering, 2019, 7(3): 03000e55

Effect of rear surface fields on hot, refluxing and escaping electron populations via numerical simulations

D. R. Rusby, C. D. Armstrong, G. G. Scott, M. King, P. McKenna, D. Neely.

High Power Laser Science and Engineering, 2019, 7(3): 03000e45

 

All-optical  acceleration in the laser wakefield

F. Zhang, Z. G. Deng, L. Q. Shan, Z. M. Zhang, B. Bi, D. X. Liu, W. W. Wang, Z. Q. Yuan, C. Tian, S. Q. Yang, B. Zhang, Y. Q. Gu.

High Power Laser Science and Engineering, 2018, 6(4): 04000e63

Femtosecond laser-induced damage threshold in snow micro-structured targets

O. Shavit, Y. Ferber, J. Papeer, E. Schleifer, M. Botton, A. Zigler, Z. Henis.

High Power Laser Science and Engineering, 2018, 6(1): 010000e7

Generation of high energy laser-driven electron and proton sources with the 200 TW system VEGA 2 at the Centro de Laseres Pulsados

L. Volpe, R. Fedosejevs, G. Gatti, J. A. Pérez-Hernández, C. Méndez, J. Apiñaniz, X. Vaisseau, C. Salgado, M. Huault, S. Malko, G. Zeraouli, V. Ospina, A. Longman, D. De Luis, K. Li, O. Varela, E. García, I. Hernández, J. D. Pisonero, J. García Ajates, J. M. Alvarez, C. García, M. Rico, D. Arana, J. Hernández-Toro, L. Roso.

High Power Laser Science and Engineering, 2019, 7(2): 02000e25

Single-shot electrons and protons time-resolved detection from high-intensity laser-solid matter interactions at SPARC_LAB

F. Bisesto, M. Galletti, M. P. Anania, M. Ferrario, R. Pompili, M. Botton, A. Zigler, F. Consoli, M. Salvadori, P. Andreoli, C. Verona.

High Power Laser Science and Engineering, 2019, 7(3): 03000e53

 

Maser radiation from collisionless shocks: application to astrophysical jets

D. C. Speirs, K. Ronald, A. D. R. Phelps, M. E. Koepke, R. A. Cairns, A. Rigby, F. Cruz, R. M. G. M. Trines, R. Bamford, B. J. Kellett, B. Albertazzi, J. E. Cross, F. Fraschetti, P. Graham, P. M. Kozlowski, Y. Kuramitsu, F. Miniati, T. Morita, M. Oliver, B. Reville, Y. Sakawa, S. Sarkar, C. Spindloe, M. Koenig, L. O. Silva, D. Q. Lamb, P. Tzeferacos, S. Lebedev, G. Gregori, R. Bingham.

High Power Laser Science and Engineering, 2019, 7(1): 01000e17

Optical diagnostics for density measurement in high-quality laser-plasma electron accelerators

Fernando Brandi, Leonida Antonio Gizzi.

High Power Laser Science and Engineering, 2019, 7(2): 02000e26

Role of magnetic field evolution on filamentary structure formation in intense laser-foil interactions

M. King, N. M. H. Butler, R. Wilson, R. Capdessus, R. J. Gray, H. W. Powell, R. J. Dance, H. Padda, B. Gonzalez-Izquierdo, D. R. Rusby, N. P. Dover, G. S. Hicks, O. C. Ettlinger, C. Scullion, D. C. Carroll, Z. Najmudin, M. Borghesi, D. Neely, P. McKenna.

High Power Laser Science and Engineering, 2019, 7(1): 01000e14

Review on TNSA diagnostics and recent developments at SPARC_LAB

Fabrizio Bisesto, Mario Galletti, Maria Pia Anania, Massimo Ferrario, Riccardo Pompili, Mordechai Botton, Elad Schleifer, Arie Zigler.

High Power Laser Science and Engineering, 2019, 7(3): 03000e56

 

Laser-induced microstructures on silicon for laser-driven acceleration experiments

Tina Ebert, Nico W. Neumann, Torsten Abel, Gabriel Schaumann, Markus Roth.

High Power Laser Science and Engineering, 2017, 5(2): 02000e13

Proton probing of laser-driven EM pulses travelling in helical coils

H. Ahmed, S. Kar, A.L. Giesecke, D. Doria, G. Nersisyan, O. Willi, C.L.S. Lewis, M. Borghesi.

High Power Laser Science and Engineering, 2017, 5(1): 010000e4

 

Laser plasma interactions

Inertial confinement fusion

Laboratory astrophysics

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Laser plasma interactions

Absolute instability modes due to rescattering of stimulated Raman scattering in a large nonuniform plasma

Yao Zhao, Zhengming Sheng, Suming Weng, Shengzhe Ji, Jianqiang Zhu.

High Power Laser Science and Engineering, 2019, 7(1): 01000e20

 

Generation of high energy laser-driven electron and proton sources with the 200 TW system VEGA 2 at the Centro de Laseres Pulsados

L. Volpe, R. Fedosejevs, G. Gatti, J. A. Pérez-Hernández, C. Méndez, J. Apiñaniz, X. Vaisseau, C. Salgado, M. Huault, S. Malko, G. Zeraouli, V. Ospina, A. Longman, D. De Luis, K. Li, O. Varela, E. García, I. Hernández, J. D. Pisonero, J. García Ajates, J. M. Alvarez, C. García, M. Rico, D. Arana, J. Hernández-Toro, L. Roso.

High Power Laser Science and Engineering, 2019, 7(2): 02000e25

 

Collective absorption of laser radiation in plasma atsub-relativistic intensities

Y. J. Gu, O. Klimo, Ph. Nicolaï, S. Shekhanov, S. Weber, V. T. Tikhonchuk.

High Power Laser Science and Engineering, 2019, 7(3): 03000e39

 

Enhancement of the surface emission at the fundamental frequency and the transmitted high-order harmonics by pre-structured targets

K. Q. Pan, D. Yang, L. Guo, Z. C. Li, S. W. Li, C. Y. Zheng, S. E. Jiang, B. H. Zhang, X. T. He.

High Power Laser Science and Engineering, 2019, 7(2): 02000e36

Maximizing magnetic field generation in high power laser-solid interactions

L. G. Huang, H. Takabe, T. E. Cowan.

High Power Laser Science and Engineering, 2019, 7(2): 02000e22

Role of magnetic field evolution on filamentary structure formation in intense laser-foil interactions

M. King, N. M. H. Butler, R. Wilson, R. Capdessus, R. J. Gray, H. W. Powell, R. J. Dance, H. Padda, B. Gonzalez-Izquierdo, D. R. Rusby, N. P. Dover, G. S. Hicks, O. C. Ettlinger, C. Scullion, D. C. Carroll, Z. Najmudin, M. Borghesi, D. Neely, P. McKenna.

High Power Laser Science and Engineering, 2019, 7(1): 01000e14

Burst behavior due to the quasimode excited by stimulated Brillouin scattering in high-intensity laser-plasma interactions

Q. S. Feng, L. H. Cao, Z. J. Liu, C. Y. Zheng, X. T. He.

High Power Laser Science and Engineering, 2019, 7(4): 04000e58
 

Dynamic stabilization of plasma instability

S. Kawata, T. Karino, Y. J. Gu.

High Power Laser Science and Engineering, 2019, 7(1): 010000e3

Experimental methods for warm dense matter research

Katerina Falk.

High Power Laser Science and Engineering, 2018, 6(4): 04000e59

Laboratory study of astrophysical collisionless shock at SG-II laser facility

Dawei Yuan, Huigang Wei, Guiyun Liang, Feilu Wang, Yutong Li, Zhe Zhang, Baojun Zhu, Jiarui Zhao, Weiman Jiang, Bo Han, Xiaoxia Yuan, Jiayong Zhong, Xiaohui Yuan, Changbo Fu, Xiaopeng Zhang, Chen Wang, Guo Jia, Jun Xiong, Zhiheng Fang, Shaoen Jiang, Kai Du, Yongkun Ding, Neng Hua, Zhanfeng Qiao, Shenlei Zhou, Baoqiang Zhu, Jianqiang Zhu, Gang Zhao, Jie Zhang.

High Power Laser Science and Engineering, 2018, 6(3): 03000e45

Particle-in-cell simulations of laser-plasma interactions at solid densities and relativistic intensities: the role of atomic processes

D. Wu, X. T. He, W. Yu, S. Fritzsche.

High Power Laser Science and Engineering, 2018, 6(3): 03000e50

Conceptual design of an experiment to study dust destruction by astrophysical shock waves

M. J.-E. Manuel, T. Temim, E. Dwek, A. M. Angulo, P. X. Belancourt, R. P. Drake, C. C. Kuranz, M. J. MacDonald, B. A. Remington.

High Power Laser Science and Engineering, 2018, 6(3): 03000e39

 

Generation of strong magnetic fields with a laser-driven coil

Zhe Zhang, Baojun Zhu, Yutong Li, Weiman Jiang, Dawei Yuan, Huigang Wei, Guiyun Liang, Feilu Wang, Gang Zhao, Jiayong Zhong, Bo Han, Neng Hua, Baoqiang Zhu, Jianqiang Zhu, Chen Wang, Zhiheng Fang, Jie Zhang.

High Power Laser Science and Engineering, 2018, 6(3): 03000e38

Analysis of microscopic properties of radiative shock experiments performed at the Orion laser facility

R. Rodríguez, G. Espinosa, J. M. Gil, F. Suzuki-Vidal, T. Clayson, C. Stehlé, P. Graham.

High Power Laser Science and Engineering, 2018, 6(2): 02000e36

Laboratory radiative accretion shocks on GEKKO XII laser facility for POLAR project

L. Van Box Som, É. Falize, M. Koenig, Y. Sakawa, B. Albertazzi, P. Barroso, J.-M. Bonnet-Bidaud, C. Busschaert, A. Ciardi, Y. Hara, N. Katsuki, R. Kumar, F. Lefevre, C. Michaut, Th. Michel, T. Miura, T. Morita, M. Mouchet, G. Rigon, T. Sano, S. Shiiba, H. Shimogawara, S. Tomiya.

High Power Laser Science and Engineering, 2018, 6(2): 02000e35

Measurement and analysis of K-shell lines of silicon ions in laser plasmas

Bo Han, Feilu Wang, Jiayong Zhong, Guiyun Liang, Huigang Wei, Dawei Yuan, Baojun Zhu, Fang Li, Chang Liu, Yanfei Li, Jiarui Zhao, Zhe Zhang, Chen Wang, Jun Xiong, Guo Jia, Neng Hua, Jianqiang Zhu, Yutong Li, Gang Zhao, Jie Zhang.

High Power Laser Science and Engineering, 2018, 6(2): 02000e31

Analytical modelling of the expansion of a solid obstacle interacting with a radiative shock

Th. Michel, E. Falize, B. Albertazzi, G. Rigon, Y. Sakawa, T. Sano, H. Shimogawara, R. Kumar, T. Morita, C. Michaut, A. Casner, P. Barroso, P. Mabey, Y. Kuramitsu, S. Laffite, L. Van Box Som, G. Gregori, R. Kodama, N. Ozaki, P. Tzeferacos, D. Lamb, M. Koenig.

High Power Laser Science and Engineering, 2018, 6(2): 02000e30

EMP control and characterization on high-power laser systems

P. Bradford, N. C. Woolsey, G. G. Scott, G. Liao, H. Liu, Y. Zhang, B. Zhu, C. Armstrong, S. Astbury, C. Brenner, P. Brummitt, F. Consoli, I. East, R. Gray, D. Haddock, P. Huggard, P. J. R. Jones, E. Montgomery, I. Musgrave, P. Oliveira, D. R. Rusby, C. Spindloe, B. Summers, E. Zemaityte, Z. Zhang, Y. Li, P. McKenna, D. Neely.

High Power Laser Science and Engineering, 2018, 6(2): 02000e21

Time evolution of stimulated Raman scattering and two-plasmon decay at laser intensities relevant for shock ignition in a hot plasma

G. Cristoforetti, L. Antonelli, D. Mancelli, S. Atzeni, F. Baffigi, F. Barbato, D. Batani, G. Boutoux, F. D’Amato, J. Dostal, R. Dudzak, E. Filippov, Y. J. Gu, L. Juha, O. Klimo, M. Krus, S. Malko, A. S. Martynenko, Ph. Nicolai, V. Ospina, S. Pikuz, O. Renner, J. Santos, V. T. Tikhonchuk, J. Trela, S. Viciani, L. Volpe, S. Weber, L. A. Gizzi.

High Power Laser Science and Engineering, 2019, 7(3): 03000e51

A demonstration of extracting the strength and wavelength of the magnetic field generated by the Weibel instability from proton radiography

Bao Du, Hong-Bo Cai, Wen-Shuai Zhang, Shi-Yang Zou, Jing Chen, Shao-Ping Zhu.

High Power Laser Science and Engineering, 2019, 7(3): 03000e40

Reflection of intense laser light from microstructured targets as a potential diagnostic of laser focus and plasma temperature

J. Jarrett, M. King, R. J. Gray, N. Neumann, L. Döhl, C. D. Baird, T. Ebert, M. Hesse, A. Tebartz, D. R. Rusby, N. C. Woolsey, D. Neely, M. Roth, P. McKenna.

High Power Laser Science and Engineering, 2019, 7(1): 010000e2

 

 

Inertial confinement fusion

Time evolution of stimulated Raman scattering and two-plasmon decay at laser intensities relevant for shock ignition in a hot plasma

G. Cristoforetti, L. Antonelli, D. Mancelli, S. Atzeni, F. Baffigi, F. Barbato, D. Batani, G. Boutoux, F. D’Amato, J. Dostal, R. Dudzak, E. Filippov, Y. J. Gu, L. Juha, O. Klimo, M. Krus, S. Malko, A. S. Martynenko, Ph. Nicolai, V. Ospina, S. Pikuz, O. Renner, J. Santos, V. T. Tikhonchuk, J. Trela, S. Viciani, L. Volpe, S. Weber, L. A. Gizzi.

High Power Laser Science and Engineering, 2019, 7(3): 03000e51

The path to electrical energy using laser fusion

Stephen E. Bodner.

High Power Laser Science and Engineering, 2019, 7(4): 04000e63

Collective absorption of laser radiation in plasma atsub-relativistic intensities

Y. J. Gu, O. Klimo, Ph. Nicolaï, S. Shekhanov, S. Weber, V. T. Tikhonchuk.

High Power Laser Science and Engineering, 2019, 7(3): 03000e39

Dynamic stabilization of plasma instability

S. Kawata, T. Karino, Y. J. Gu.

High Power Laser Science and Engineering, 2019, 7(1): 010000e3

An investigation progress toward Be-based ablator materials for the inertial confinement fusion

Bingchi Luo, Jiqiang Zhang, Yudan He, Long Chen, Jiangshan Luo, Kai Li, Weidong Wu.

High Power Laser Science and Engineering, 2017, 5(2): 02000e10

 

 

Laboratory astrophysics

Maser radiation from collisionless shocks: application to astrophysical jets

D. C. Speirs, K. Ronald, A. D. R. Phelps, M. E. Koepke, R. A. Cairns, A. Rigby, F. Cruz, R. M. G. M. Trines, R. Bamford, B. J. Kellett, B. Albertazzi, J. E. Cross, F. Fraschetti, P. Graham, P. M. Kozlowski, Y. Kuramitsu, F. Miniati, T. Morita, M. Oliver, B. Reville, Y. Sakawa, S. Sarkar, C. Spindloe, M. Koenig, L. O. Silva, D. Q. Lamb, P. Tzeferacos, S. Lebedev, G. Gregori, R. Bingham.

High Power Laser Science and Engineering, 2019, 7(1): 01000e17

 

Magnetic reconnection driven by intense lasers

Jiayong Zhong, Xiaoxia Yuan, Bo Han, Wei Sun, Yongli Ping.

High Power Laser Science and Engineering, 2018, 6(3): 03000e48

Turbulent hydrodynamics experiments in high energy density plasmas: scientific case and preliminary results of the TurboHEDP project

A. Casner, G. Rigon, B. Albertazzi, Th. Michel, T. Pikuz, A. Faenov, P. Mabey, N. Ozaki, Y. Sakawa, T. Sano, J. Ballet, P. Tzeferacos, D. Lamb, E. Falize, G. Gregori, M. Koenig.

High Power Laser Science and Engineering, 2018, 6(3): 03000e44

Physical parameter estimation with MCMC from observations of Vela X-1

Lan Zhang, Feilu Wang, Xiangxiang Xue, Dawei Yuan, Huigang Wei, Gang Zhao.

High Power Laser Science and Engineering, 2018, 6(2): 02000e37

A platform for high-repetition-rate laser experiments on the Large Plasma Device

D. B. Schaeffer, L. R. Hofer, E. N. Knall, P. V. Heuer, C. G. Constantin, C. Niemann.

High Power Laser Science and Engineering, 2018, 6(2): 02000e17

Target Fabrication

Laser and plasma diagnostics

Others

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Target Fabrication

High-repetition-rate (>= kHz) targets and optics from liquid microjets for high-intensity laser-plasma interactions

K. M. George, J. T. Morrison, S. Feister, G. K. Ngirmang, J. R. Smith, A. J. Klim, J. Snyder, D. Austin, W. Erbsen, K. D. Frische, J. Nees, C. Orban, E. A. Chowdhury, W. M. Roquemore. 

High Power Laser Science and Engineering, 2019, 7(3): 03000e50

Advanced fuel layering in line-moving, high-gain direct-drive cryogenic targets

I. V. Aleksandrova, E. R. Koresheva.

High Power Laser Science and Engineering, 2019, 7(3): 03000e38

Assembly and metrology of NIF target subassemblies using robotic systems

K.-J. Boehm, N. Alexander, J. Anderson, L. Carlson, M. Farrell. 

High Power Laser Science and Engineering, 2017, 5(4): 04000e25

REACH compliant epoxides used in the synthesis of Fe(III)-based aerogel monoliths for target fabrication

Alberto Valls Arrufat, Magdalena Budziszewska, Clement Lopez, Aymeric Nguyen, Jakub Sitek, Paul Jones, Chris Shaw, Ian Hayes, Gareth Cairns, Glenn Leighton. 

High Power Laser Science and Engineering, 2017, 5(4): 04000e24

Design and fabrication of gas cell targets for laboratory astrophysics experiments on the Orion high-power laser facility

C. Spindloe, D. Wyatt, S. Astbury, G. F. Swadling, T. Clayson, C. Stehlé, J. M. Foster, E. Gumbrell, R. Charles, C. N. Danson, P. Brummitt, F. Suzuki-Vidal. 

High Power Laser Science and Engineering, 2017, 5(3): 03000e22

Surface characterization of ICF capsule by AFM-based profilometer

Jie Meng, Xuesen Zhao, Xing Tang, Yihao Xia, Xiaojun Ma, Dangzhong Gao.

High Power Laser Science and Engineering, 2017, 5(3): 03000e21

Importance of limiting hohlraum leaks at cryogenic temperatures on NIF targets

Suhas Bhandarkar, Nick Teslich, Ben Haid, Evan Mapoles. 

High Power Laser Science and Engineering, 2017, 5(3): 03000e19

Targets for high repetition rate laser facilities: needs, challenges and perspectives

I. Prencipe, J. Fuchs, S. Pascarelli, D. W. Schumacher, R. B. Stephens, N. B. Alexander, R. Briggs, M. Büscher, M. O. Cernaianu, A. Choukourov, M. De Marco, A. Erbe, J. Fassbender, G. Fiquet, P. Fitzsimmons, C. Gheorghiu, J. Hund, L. G. Huang, M. Harmand, N. J. Hartley, A. Irman, T. Kluge, Z. Konopkova, S. Kraft, D. Kraus, V. Leca, D. Margarone, J. Metzkes, K. Nagai, W. Nazarov, P. Lutoslawski, D. Papp, M. Passoni, A. Pelka, J. P. Perin, J. Schulz, M. Smid, C. Spindloe, S. Steinke, R. Torchio, C. Vass, T. Wiste, R. Zaffino, K. Zeil, T. Tschentscher, U. Schramm, T. E. Cowan. 

High Power Laser Science and Engineering, 2017, 5(3): 03000e17

Developing targets for radiation transport experiments at the Omega laser facility

D. Capelli, C.A. Charsley-Groffman, R.B. Randolph, D.W. Schmidt, T. Cardenas, F. Fierro, G. Rivera, C. Hamilton, J.D. Hager, H. M. Johns, N. E. Lanier, J.L. Kline. 

High Power Laser Science and Engineering, 2017, 5(3): 03000e15

Exploring novel target structures for manipulating relativistic laser-plasma interaction

Liangliang Ji, Sheng Jiang, Alexander Pukhov, Richard Freeman, Kramer Akli. 

High Power Laser Science and Engineering, 2017, 5(2): 02000e14

An automated, 0.5Hz nano-foil target positioning system for intense laser plasma experiments

Ying Gao, Jianhui Bin, Daniel Haffa, Christian Kreuzer, Jens Hartmann, Martin Speicher, Florian H. Lindner, Tobias M. Ostermayr, Peter Hilz, Thomas F. Rösch, Sebastian Lehrack, Franz Englbrecht, Sebastian Seuferling, Max Gilljohann, Hao Ding, Wenjun Ma, Katia Parodi, Jörg Schreiber. 

High Power Laser Science and Engineering, 2017, 5(2): 02000e12

Review on high repetition rate and mass production of the cryogenic targets for laser IFE

I.V. Aleksandrova, E.R. Koresheva. 

High Power Laser Science and Engineering, 2017, 5(2): 02000e11

A new spatial angle assembly method of the ICF target

Wenrong Wu, Lie Bi, Kai Du, Juan Zhang, Honggang Yang, Honglian Wang.

High Power Laser Science and Engineering, 2017, 5(2): 020000e9

Efficient offline production of freestanding thin plastic foils for laser-driven ion sources

Sebastian Seuferling, Matthias Alexander Otto Haug, Peter Hilz, Daniel Haffa, Christian Kreuzer, Jörg Schreiber. 

High Power Laser Science and Engineering, 2017, 5(2): 020000e8

 

Permeation fill-tube design for inertial confinement fusion target capsules

B.S. Rice, J. Ulreich, C. Fella, J. Crippen, P. Fitzsimmons, A. Nikroo. 

High Power Laser Science and Engineering, 2017, 5(1): 010000e6

Development of target fabrication for laser-driven inertial confinement fusion at research center of laser fusion

Tao Wang, Kai Du , Zhibing He, Xiaoshan He.

High Power Laser Science and Engineering, 2017, 5(1): 010000e5

 

 

Laser and plasma diagnostics

Absolute instability modes due to rescattering of stimulated Raman scattering in a large nonuniform plasma

Yao Zhao, Zhengming Sheng, Suming Weng, Shengzhe Ji, Jianqiang Zhu. 

High Power Laser Science and Engineering, 2019, 7(1): 01000e20

Generation of high energy laser-driven electron and proton sources with the 200 TW system VEGA 2 at the Centro de Laseres Pulsados

L. Volpe, R. Fedosejevs, G. Gatti, J. A. Pérez-Hernández, C. Méndez, J. Apiñaniz, X. Vaisseau, C. Salgado, M. Huault, S. Malko, G. Zeraouli, V. Ospina, A. Longman, D. De Luis, K. Li, O. Varela, E. García, I. Hernández, J. D. Pisonero, J. García Ajates, J. M. Alvarez, C. García, M. Rico, D. Arana, J. Hernández-Toro, L. Roso. 

High Power Laser Science and Engineering, 2019, 7(2): 02000e2

Collective absorption of laser radiation in plasma atsub-relativistic intensities

Y. J. Gu, O. Klimo, Ph. Nicolaï, S. Shekhanov, S. Weber, V. T. Tikhonchuk.

High Power Laser Science and Engineering, 2019, 7(3): 03000e39

Enhancement of the surface emission at the fundamental frequency and the transmitted high-order harmonics by pre-structured targets

K. Q. Pan, D. Yang, L. Guo, Z. C. Li, S. W. Li, C. Y. Zheng, S. E. Jiang, B. H. Zhang, X. T. He. 

High Power Laser Science and Engineering, 2019, 7(2): 02000e36

Maximizing magnetic field generation in high power laser-solid interactions

L. G. Huang, H. Takabe, T. E. Cowan. 

High Power Laser Science and Engineering, 2019, 7(2): 02000e22

Role of magnetic field evolution on filamentary structure formation in intense laser-foil interactions

M. King, N. M. H. Butler, R. Wilson, R. Capdessus, R. J. Gray, H. W. Powell, R. J. Dance, H. Padda, B. Gonzalez-Izquierdo, D. R. Rusby, N. P. Dover, G. S. Hicks, O. C. Ettlinger, C. Scullion, D. C. Carroll, Z. Najmudin, M. Borghesi, D. Neely, P. McKenna. 

High Power Laser Science and Engineering, 2019, 7(1): 01000e14

Burst behavior due to the quasimode excited by stimulated Brillouin scattering in high-intensity laser-plasma interactions

Q. S. Feng, L. H. Cao, Z. J. Liu, C. Y. Zheng, X. T. He. 

High Power Laser Science and Engineering, 2019, 7(4): 04000e58

Dynamic stabilization of plasma instability

S. Kawata, T. Karino, Y. J. Gu. 

High Power Laser Science and Engineering, 2019, 7(1): 010000e3

Experimental methods for warm dense matter research

Katerina Falk.

High Power Laser Science and Engineering, 2018, 6(4): 04000e59

Laboratory study of astrophysical collisionless shock at SG-II laser facility

Dawei Yuan, Huigang Wei, Guiyun Liang, Feilu Wang, Yutong Li, Zhe Zhang, Baojun Zhu, Jiarui Zhao, Weiman Jiang, Bo Han, Xiaoxia Yuan, Jiayong Zhong, Xiaohui Yuan, Changbo Fu, Xiaopeng Zhang, Chen Wang, Guo Jia, Jun Xiong, Zhiheng Fang, Shaoen Jiang, Kai Du, Yongkun Ding, Neng Hua, Zhanfeng Qiao, Shenlei Zhou, Baoqiang Zhu, Jianqiang Zhu, Gang Zhao, Jie Zhang. 

High Power Laser Science and Engineering, 2018, 6(3): 03000e45

Particle-in-cell simulations of laser-plasma interactions at solid densities and relativistic intensities: the role of atomic processes

D. Wu, X. T. He, W. Yu, S. Fritzsche.

High Power Laser Science and Engineering, 2018, 6(3): 03000e50

Conceptual design of an experiment to study dust destruction by astrophysical shock waves

M. J.-E. Manuel, T. Temim, E. Dwek, A. M. Angulo, P. X. Belancourt, R. P. Drake, C. C. Kuranz, M. J. MacDonald, B. A. Remington. 

 High Power Laser Science and Engineering, 2018, 6(3): 03000e39

Generation of strong magnetic fields with a laser-driven coil

Zhe Zhang, Baojun Zhu, Yutong Li, Weiman Jiang, Dawei Yuan, Huigang Wei, Guiyun Liang, Feilu Wang, Gang Zhao, Jiayong Zhong, Bo Han, Neng Hua, Baoqiang Zhu, Jianqiang Zhu, Chen Wang, Zhiheng Fang, Jie Zhang. 

High Power Laser Science and Engineering, 2018, 6(3): 03000e38

Analysis of microscopic properties of radiative shock experiments performed at the Orion laser facility

R. Rodríguez, G. Espinosa, J. M. Gil, F. Suzuki-Vidal, T. Clayson, C. Stehlé, P. Graham. 

High Power Laser Science and Engineering, 2018, 6(2): 02000e36

Laboratory radiative accretion shocks on GEKKO XII laser facility for POLAR project

L. Van Box Som, É. Falize, M. Koenig, Y. Sakawa, B. Albertazzi, P. Barroso, J.-M. Bonnet-Bidaud, C. Busschaert, A. Ciardi, Y. Hara, N. Katsuki, R. Kumar, F. Lefevre, C. Michaut, Th. Michel, T. Miura, T. Morita, M. Mouchet, G. Rigon, T. Sano, S. Shiiba, H. Shimogawara, S. Tomiya. 

High Power Laser Science and Engineering, 2018, 6(2): 02000e35

Measurement and analysis of K-shell lines of silicon ions in laser plasmas

Bo Han, Feilu Wang, Jiayong Zhong, Guiyun Liang, Huigang Wei, Dawei Yuan, Baojun Zhu, Fang Li, Chang Liu, Yanfei Li, Jiarui Zhao, Zhe Zhang, Chen Wang, Jun Xiong, Guo Jia, Neng Hua, Jianqiang Zhu, Yutong Li, Gang Zhao, Jie Zhang. 

High Power Laser Science and Engineering, 2018, 6(2): 02000e31

Analytical modelling of the expansion of a solid obstacle interacting with a radiative shock

Th. Michel, E. Falize, B. Albertazzi, G. Rigon, Y. Sakawa, T. Sano, H. Shimogawara, R. Kumar, T. Morita, C. Michaut, A. Casner, P. Barroso, P. Mabey, Y. Kuramitsu, S. Laffite, L. Van Box Som, G. Gregori, R. Kodama, N. Ozaki, P. Tzeferacos, D. Lamb, M. Koenig. 

High Power Laser Science and Engineering, 2018, 6(2): 02000e30

EMP control and characterization on high-power laser systems

P. Bradford, N. C. Woolsey, G. G. Scott, G. Liao, H. Liu, Y. Zhang, B. Zhu, C. Armstrong, S. Astbury, C. Brenner, P. Brummitt, F. Consoli, I. East, R. Gray, D. Haddock, P. Huggard, P. J. R. Jones, E. Montgomery, I. Musgrave, P. Oliveira, D. R. Rusby, C. Spindloe, B. Summers, E. Zemaityte, Z. Zhang, Y. Li, P. McKenna, D. Neely. 

High Power Laser Science and Engineering, 2018, 6(2): 02000e21

Time evolution of stimulated Raman scattering and two-plasmon decay at laser intensities relevant for shock ignition in a hot plasma

G. Cristoforetti, L. Antonelli, D. Mancelli, S. Atzeni, F. Baffigi, F. Barbato, D. Batani, G. Boutoux, F. D’Amato, J. Dostal, R. Dudzak, E. Filippov, Y. J. Gu, L. Juha, O. Klimo, M. Krus, S. Malko, A. S. Martynenko, Ph. Nicolai, V. Ospina, S. Pikuz, O. Renner, J. Santos, V. T. Tikhonchuk, J. Trela, S. Viciani, L. Volpe, S. Weber, L. A. Gizzi. 

 High Power Laser Science and Engineering, 2019, 7(3): 03000e51

A demonstration of extracting the strength and wavelength of the magnetic field generated by the Weibel instability from proton radiography

Bao Du, Hong-Bo Cai, Wen-Shuai Zhang, Shi-Yang Zou, Jing Chen, Shao-Ping Zhu. 

High Power Laser Science and Engineering, 2019, 7(3): 03000e40

Reflection of intense laser light from microstructured targets as a potential diagnostic of laser focus and plasma temperature

J. Jarrett, M. King, R. J. Gray, N. Neumann, L. Döhl, C. D. Baird, T. Ebert, M. Hesse, A. Tebartz, D. R. Rusby, N. C. Woolsey, D. Neely, M. Roth, P. McKenna. 

High Power Laser Science and Engineering, 2019, 7(1): 010000e2

 

 

Others

Accurate reconstruction of electric field of ultrashort laser pulse with complete two-step phase-shifting

Yi Cai, Zhenkuan Chen, Shuiqin Zheng, Qinggang Lin, Xuanke Zeng, Ying Li, Jingzhen Li, Shixiang Xu. 

High Power Laser Science and Engineering, 2019, 7(1): 01000e13

Calibration and verification of streaked optical pyrometer system used for laser-induced shock experiments

Zhiyu He, Guo Jia, Fan Zhang, Xiuguang Huang, Zhiheng Fang, Jiaqing Dong, Hua Shu, Junjian Ye, Zhiyong Xie, Yuchun Tu, Qili Zhang, Erfu Guo, Wenbing Pei, Sizu Fu.

High Power Laser Science and Engineering, 2019, 7(3): 03000e49

Performance of an elliptical crystal spectrometer for SGII X-ray opacity experiments

Ruirong Wang, Honghai An, Zhiyong Xie, Wei Wang. 

High Power Laser Science and Engineering, 2018, 6(1): 010000e3

Optimizing the cleanliness in multi-segment disk amplifiers based on vector flow schemes

Zhiyuan Ren, Jianqiang Zhu, Zhigang Liu, Xiaowei Yang. 

High Power Laser Science and Engineering, 2018, 6(1): 010000e1

Laser facility and engineering

Free electron lasers

Diode pumped solid state lasers

Fiber and fiber lasers

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Laser facility and engineering

Technology development for ultraintense all-OPCPA systems

J. Bromage, S.-W. Bahk, I. A. Begishev, C. Dorrer, M. J. Guardalben, B. N. Hoffman, J. B. Oliver, R. G. Roides, E. M. Schiesser, M. J. Shoup, M. Spilatro, B. Webb, D. Weiner, J. D. Zuegel. 

 High Power Laser Science and Engineering, 2019, 7(1): 010000e4

 

Petawatt and exawatt class lasers worldwide

Colin N. Danson, Constantin Haefner, Jake Bromage, Thomas Butcher, Jean-Christophe F. Chanteloup, Enam A. Chowdhury, Almantas Galvanauskas, Leonida A. Gizzi, Joachim Hein, David I. Hillier, Nicholas W. Hopps, Yoshiaki Kato, Efim A. Khazanov, Ryosuke Kodama, Georg Korn, Ruxin Li, Yutong Li, Jens Limpert, Jingui Ma, Chang Hee Nam, David Neely, Dimitrios Papadopoulos, Rory R. Penman, Liejia Qian, Jorge J. Rocca, Andrey A. Shaykin, Craig W. Siders, Christopher Spindloe, Sándor Szatmári, Raoul M. G. M. Trines, Jianqiang Zhu, Ping Zhu, Jonathan D. Zuegel. 

High Power Laser Science and Engineering, 2019, 7(3): 03000e54

 

ARCTURUS laser: a versatile high-contrast, high-power multi-beam laser system

M. Cerchez, R. Prasad, B. Aurand, A. L. Giesecke, S. Spickermann, S. Brauckmann, E. Aktan, M. Swantusch, M. Toncian, T. Toncian, O. Willi. 

High Power Laser Science and Engineering, 2019, 7(3): 03000e37

 

Performance demonstration of the PENELOPE main amplifier HEPA I using broadband nanosecond pulses

D. Albach, M. Loeser, M. Siebold, U. Schramm.

High Power Laser Science and Engineering, 2019, 7(1): 010000e1

 

Implementation of a phase plate for the generation of homogeneous focal-spot intensity distributions at the high-energy short-pulse laser 

V. Bagnoud, J. Hornung, M. Afshari, U. Eisenbarth, C. Brabetz, Z. Major, B. Zielbauer. 

 High Power Laser Science and Engineering, 2019, 7(4): 04000e62

 

Design and experimental demonstration of a high conversion efficiency OPCPA pre-amplifier for petawatt laser facility

Xiao Liang, Xinglong Xie, Jun Kang, Qingwei Yang, Hui Wei, Meizhi Sun, Jianqiang Zhu. 

High Power Laser Science and Engineering, 2018, 6(4): 04000e58

 

Status and development of high-power laser facilities at the NLHPLP

Jianqiang Zhu, Jian Zhu, Xuechun Li, Baoqiang Zhu, Weixin Ma, Xingqiang Lu, Wei Fan, Zhigang Liu, Shenlei Zhou, Guang Xu, Guowen Zhang, Xinglong Xie, Lin Yang, Jiangfeng Wang, Xiaoping Ouyang, Li Wang, Dawei Li, Pengqian Yang, Quantang Fan, Mingying Sun, Chong Liu, Dean Liu, Yanli Zhang, Hua Tao, Meizhi Sun, Ping Zhu, Bingyan Wang, Zhaoyang Jiao, Lei Ren, Daizhong Liu, Xiang Jiao, Hongbiao Huang, Zunqi Lin. 

High Power Laser Science and Engineering, 2018, 6(4): 04000e55

 

400TW operation of Orion at ultra-high contrast

Stefan Parker, Colin Danson, David Egan, Stephen Elsmere, Mark Girling, Ewan Harvey, David Hillier, Dianne Hussey, Stephen Masoero, James McLoughlin, Rory Penman, Paul Treadwell, David Winter, Nicholas Hopps.

High Power Laser Science and Engineering, 2018, 6(3): 03000e47

 

Experimental platform for the investigation of magnetized-reverse-shock dynamics in the context of POLAR

B. Albertazzi, E. Falize, A. Pelka, F. Brack, F. Kroll, R. Yurchak, E. Brambrink, P. Mabey, N. Ozaki, S. Pikuz, L. Van Box Som, J. M. Bonnet-Bidaud, J. E. Cross, E. Filippov, G. Gregori, R. Kodama, M. Mouchet, T. Morita, Y. Sakawa, R. P. Drake, C. C. Kuranz, M. J.-E. Manuel, C. Li, P. Tzeferacos, D. Lamb, U. Schramm, M. Koenig. 

High Power Laser Science and Engineering, 2018, 6(3): 03000e43

 

Progress of the injection laser system of SG-II

Wei Fan, Youen Jiang, Jiangfeng Wang, Xiaochao Wang, Dajie Huang, Xinghua Lu, Hui Wei, Guoyang Li, Xue Pan, Zhi Qiao, Chao Wang, He Cheng, Peng Zhang, Wenfa Huang, Zhuli Xiao, Shengjia Zhang, Xuechun Li, Jianqiang Zhu, Zunqi Lin. 

High Power Laser Science and Engineering, 2018, 6(2): 02000e34

 

Analysis and construction status of SG-II 5PW laser facility

Jianqiang Zhu, Xinglong Xie, Meizhi Sun, Jun Kang, Qingwei Yang, Ailin Guo, Haidong Zhu, Ping Zhu, Qi Gao, Xiao Liang, Ziruo Cui, Shunhua Yang, Cheng Zhang, Zunqi Lin.

High Power Laser Science and Engineering, 2018, 6(2): 02000e29

 

Design and performance of final optics assembly in SG-II Upgrade laser facility

Zhaoyang Jiao, Ping Shao, Dongfeng Zhao, Rong Wu, Lailin Ji, Li Wang, Lan Xia, Dong Liu, Yang Zhou, Lingjie Ju, Zhijian Cai, Qiang Ye, Zhanfeng Qiao, Neng Hua, Qiang Li, Wei Pan, Lei Ren, Mingying Sun, Jianqiang Zhu, Zunqi Lin. 

High Power Laser Science and Engineering, 2018, 6(2): 02000e14

 

Target alignment in the Shen-Guang II Upgrade laser facility

Lei Ren, Ping Shao, Dongfeng Zhao, Yang Zhou, Zhijian Cai, Neng Hua, Zhaoyang Jiao, Lan Xia, Zhanfeng Qiao, Rong Wu, Lailin Ji, Dong Liu, Lingjie Ju, Wei Pan, Qiang Li, Qiang Ye, Mingying Sun, Jianqiang Zhu, Zunqi Lin. 

High Power Laser Science and Engineering, 2018, 6(1): 01000e10

 

Ultrashort pulse capability at the L2I high intensity laser facility

Gonçalo Figueira, Joana Alves, João M. Dias, Marta Fajardo, Nuno Gomes, Victor Hariton, Tayyab Imran, Celso P. João, Jayanath Koliyadu, Swen Künzel, Nelson C. Lopes, Hugo Pires, Filipe Ruão, Gareth Williams. 

High Power Laser Science and Engineering, 2017, 5(1): 010000e2

 

 

Free electron lasers

Dispersion effects on performance of free-electron laser based on laser wakefield accelerator

Ke Feng, Changhai Yu, Jiansheng Liu, Wentao Wang, Zhijun Zhang, Rong Qi, Ming Fang, Jiaqi Liu, Zhiyong Qin, Ying Wu, Yu Chen, Lintong Ke, Cheng Wang, Ruxin Li. 

High Power Laser Science and Engineering, 2018, 6(4): 04000e64

 

Laser system design for table-top X-ray light source

Anne-Laure Calendron, Joachim Meier, Michael Hemmer, Luis E. Zapata, Fabian Reichert, Huseyin Cankaya, Damian N. Schimpf, Yi Hua, Guoqing Chang, Aram Kalaydzhyan, Arya Fallahi, Nicholas H. Matlis, Franz X. Kärtner. 

High Power Laser Science and Engineering, 2018, 6(1): 01000e12

 

Maximizing magnetic field generation in high power laser-solid interactions

L. G. Huang, H. Takabe, T. E. Cowan. 

 High Power Laser Science and Engineering, 2019, 7(2): 02000e22

 

Fluid sample injectors for x-ray free electron laser at SACLA

Kensuke Tono.

High Power Laser Science and Engineering, 2017, 5(2): 020000e7

 

 

Diode pumped solid state lasers

High-power, Joule-class, temporally shaped multi-pass ring laser amplifier with two Nd:glass laser heads

Jiangtao Guo, Jiangfeng Wang, Hui Wei, Wenfa Huang, Tingrui Huang, Gang Xia, Wei Fan, Zunqi Lin. 

High Power Laser Science and Engineering, 2019, 7(1): 010000e8

 

Modeling of the 3D spatio-temporal thermal profile of joule-class -based laser amplifiers

Issa Tamer, Sebastian Keppler, Jörg Körner, Marco Hornung, Marco Hellwing, Frank Schorcht, Joachim Hein, Malte C. Kaluza. 

High Power Laser Science and Engineering, 2019, 7(3): 03000e42

 

High-repetition-rate and high-power picosecond regenerative amplifier based on a single bulk Nd:GdVO₄ crystal

Jie Guo, Wei Wang, Hua Lin, Xiaoyan Liang. 

High Power Laser Science and Engineering, 2019, 7(2): 02000e35

 

High-repetition-rate, high-peak-power 1450 nm laser source based on optical parametric chirped pulse amplification

Pengfei Wang, Beijie Shao, Hongpeng Su, Xinlin Lv, Yanyan Li, Yujie Peng, Yuxin Leng. 

High Power Laser Science and Engineering, 2019, 7(2): 02000e32

 

Development of a 100 J, 10 Hz laser for compression experiments at the High Energy Density instrument at the European XFEL

Paul Mason, Saumyabrata Banerjee, Jodie Smith, Thomas Butcher, Jonathan Phillips, Hauke Höppner, Dominik Möller, Klaus Ertel, Mariastefania De Vido, Ian Hollingham, Andrew Norton, Stephanie Tomlinson, Tinesimba Zata, Jorge Suarez Merchan, Chris Hooker, Mike Tyldesley, Toma Toncian, Cristina Hernandez-Gomez, Chris Edwards, John Collier. 

High Power Laser Science and Engineering, 2018, 6(4): 04000e65

 

LD-pumped gas-cooled multislab Nd:glass laser amplification to joule level

Wenfa Huang, Jiangfeng Wang, Xinghua Lu, Tingrui Huang, Jiangtao Guo, Wei Fan, Xuechun Li.

High Power Laser Science and Engineering, 2018, 6(2): 02000e15

 

Scaling diode-pumped, high energy picosecond lasers to kilowatt average powers

Brendan A. Reagan, Cory Baumgarten, Elzbieta Jankowska, Han Chi, Herman Bravo, Kristian Dehne, Michael Pedicone, Liang Yin, Hanchen Wang, Carmen S. Menoni, Jorge J. Rocca. 

High Power Laser Science and Engineering, 2018, 6(1): 01000e11

 

Pulsed LD side-pumped MgO: LN electro-optic cavity-dumped 1123nm Nd: YAG laser with short pulse width and high peak power

Yang Bai, Bing Bai, Diao Li, Yanxiao Sun, Jianlin Li, Lei Hou, Mingxuan Hu, Jintao Bai. 

High Power Laser Science and Engineering, 2018, 6(1): 010000e4

 

Performance demonstration of the PENELOPE main amplifier HEPA I using broadband nanosecond pulses

D. Albach, M. Loeser, M. Siebold, U. Schramm. 

High Power Laser Science and Engineering, 2019, 7(1): 010000e1

 

High-extraction-efficiency, nanosecond bidirectional ring amplifier with twin pulses

Tiancheng Yu, Jiangtao Guo, Gang Xia, Xiang Zhang, Fan Gao, Jiangfeng Wang, Wei Fan, Xiao Yuan. 

High Power Laser Science and Engineering, 2019, 7(2): 02000e30

 

 

Fiber and fiber lasers

All-fiber high-power linearly polarized supercontinuum generation from polarization-maintaining photonic crystal fibers

Yue Tao, Sheng-Ping Chen. 

High Power Laser Science and Engineering, 2019, 7(2): 02000e28

High-brightness all-fiber Raman lasers directly pumped by multimode laser diodes

S. A. Babin. 

High Power Laser Science and Engineering, 2019, 7(1): 01000e15

Dual-wavelength bidirectional pumped high-power Raman fiber laser

Zehui Wang, Qirong Xiao, Yusheng Huang, Jiading Tian, Dan Li, Ping Yan, Mali Gong. 

High Power Laser Science and Engineering, 2019, 7(1): 010000e5

Passive optimization of pump noise transfer function by narrow band-pass filtering in femtosecond fiber lasers

Peng Qin, Sijia Wang, Minglie Hu, Youjian Song.

High Power Laser Science and Engineering, 2019, 7(3): 03000e52

Environmentally stable Er-fiber mode-locked pulse generation and amplification by spectrally filtered and phase-biased nonlinear amplifying long-loop mirror

Zhengru Guo, Qiang Hao, Junsong Peng, Heping Zeng. 

High Power Laser Science and Engineering, 2019, 7(3): 03000e47

Selective generation of individual Raman Stokes lines using dissipative soliton resonance pulses

He Xu, Sheng-Ping Chen, Zong-Fu Jiang. 

High Power Laser Science and Engineering, 2019, 7(3): 03000e43

Fabrication of kW-level chirped and tilted fiber Bragg gratings and filtering of stimulated Raman scattering in high-power CW oscillators

Kerong Jiao, Jian Shu, Hua Shen, Zhiwen Guan, Feiyan Yang, Rihong Zhu.

High Power Laser Science and Engineering, 2019, 7(2): 02000e31

 

High-peak-power temporally shaped nanosecond fiber laser immune to SPM-induced spectral broadening

Rongtao Su, Pengfei Ma, Pu Zhou, Zilun Chen, Xiaolin Wang, Yanxing Ma, Jian Wu, Xiaojun Xu. 

High Power Laser Science and Engineering, 2019, 7(2): 02000e27

Mitigation of stimulated Raman scattering in kilowatt-level diode-pumped fiber amplifiers with chirped and tilted fiber Bragg gratings

Meng Wang, Le Liu, Zefeng Wang, Xiaoming Xi, Xiaojun Xu. 

High Power Laser Science and Engineering, 2019, 7(1): 01000e18

Deep-learning-based phase control method for tiled aperture coherent beam combining systems

Tianyue Hou, Yi An, Qi Chang, Pengfei Ma, Jun Li, Dong Zhi, Liangjin Huang, Rongtao Su, Jian Wu, Yanxing Ma, Pu Zhou.

High Power Laser Science and Engineering, 2019, 7(4): 04000e59

 

Generation of 100 nJ pulse, 1 W average power at  from an intermode beating mode-locked all-fiber laser

Jiaji Zhang, Duanduan Wu, Ruwei Zhao, Rongping Wang, Shixun Dai. 

High Power Laser Science and Engineering, 2019, 7(4): 04000e65

Loss mechanism of all-fiber cascaded side pumping combiner

Chengmin Lei, Zilun Chen, Yanran Gu, Hu Xiao, Jing Hou. 

High Power Laser Science and Engineering, 2018, 6(4): 04000e56

High power all-fiberized and narrow-bandwidth MOPA system by tandem pumping strategy for thermally induced mode instability suppression

Pengfei Ma, Hu Xiao, Daren Meng, Wei Liu, Rumao Tao, Jinyong Leng, Yanxing Ma, Rongtao Su, Pu Zhou, Zejin Liu. 

High Power Laser Science and Engineering, 2018, 6(4): 04000e57

Toward high-power nonlinear fiber amplifier

Hanwei Zhang, Pu Zhou, Hu Xiao, Jinyong Leng, Rumao Tao, Xiaolin Wang, Jiangming Xu, Xiaojun Xu, Zejin Liu.

High Power Laser Science and Engineering, 2018, 6(3): 03000e51

In-band pumping avenue based high power superfluorescent fiber source with record power andnear-diffraction-limited beam quality

Jiangming Xu, Jun Ye, Hu Xiao, Jinyong Leng, Wei Liu, Pu Zhou. 

High Power Laser Science and Engineering, 2018, 6(3): 03000e46

Monolithic high-average-power linearly polarized nanosecond pulsed fiber laser with near-diffraction-limited beam quality

Long Huang, Pengfei Ma, Daren Meng, Lei Li, Rumao Tao, Rongtao Su, Yanxing Ma, Pu Zhou. 

High Power Laser Science and Engineering, 2018, 6(3): 03000e42

Development and prospect of high-power Yb³⁺ doped fibers

Yibo Wang, Gui Chen, Jinyan Li.

High Power Laser Science and Engineering, 2018, 6(3): 03000e40

 

10 watt-level tunable narrow linewidth  all-fiber amplifier

Ni Tang, Zhiyue Zhou, Zhixian Li, Zefeng Wang.

High Power Laser Science and Engineering, 2018, 6(2): 02000e33

Nonlinearity optimization of dissipative-soliton fiber laser for generation of pulses with 350 kW peak power

Han Chi, Bowen Liu, Youjian Song, Minglie Hu, Lu Chai, Weidong Shen, Xu Liu, Chingyue Wang. 

 High Power Laser Science and Engineering, 2018, 6(2): 02000e27

Investigation on extreme frequency shift in silica fiber-based high-power Raman fiber laser

Jiaxin Song, Hanshuo Wu, Jun Ye, Hanwei Zhang, Jiangming Xu, Pu Zhou, Zejin Liu. 

High Power Laser Science and Engineering, 2018, 6(2): 02000e28

 

Numerical modeling of the thermally induced core laser leakage in high power co-pumped ytterbium doped fiber amplifier

Lingchao Kong, Jinyong Leng, Pu Zhou, Zongfu Jiang.

High Power Laser Science and Engineering, 2018, 6(2): 02000e25

Power scaling on tellurite glass Raman fibre lasers for mid-infrared applications

Tianfu Yao, Liangjin Huang, Pu Zhou, Bing Lei, Jinyong Leng, Jinbao Chen. 

High Power Laser Science and Engineering, 2018, 6(2): 02000e24

High pulse energy fiber/solid-slab hybrid picosecond pulse system for material processing on polycrystalline diamonds

Wei Chen, Bowen Liu, Youjian Song, Lu Chai, Qianjin Cui, Qingjing Liu, Chingyue Wang, Minglie Hu. 

High Power Laser Science and Engineering, 2018, 6(2): 02000e18

kW-class high power fiber laser enabled by active long tapered fiber

Chen Shi, Hanwei Zhang, Xiaolin Wang, Pu Zhou, Xiaojun Xu. 

High Power Laser Science and Engineering, 2018, 6(2): 02000e16

Sub-40-fs high-power Yb:CALYO laser pumped by single-mode fiber laser

Wenlong Tian, Geyang Wang, Dacheng Zhang, Jiangfeng Zhu, Zhaohua Wang, Xiaodong Xu, Jun Xu, Zhiyi Wei. 

High Power Laser Science and Engineering, 2019, 7(4): 04000e64

302 W triple-frequency, single-mode, linearly polarized Yb-doped all-fiber amplifier

Xiang Zhao, Yifeng Yang, Hui Shen, Xiaolong Chen, Gang Bai, Jingpu Zhang, Yunfeng Qi, Bing He, Jun Zhou. 

High Power Laser Science and Engineering, 2017, 5(4): 04000e31

kW-level, narrow-linewidth linearly polarized fiber laser with excellent beam quality through compact one-stage amplification scheme

Man Jiang, Pengfei Ma, Long Huang, Jiangming Xu, Pu Zhou, Xijia Gu.

High Power Laser Science and Engineering, 2017, 5(4): 04000e30

 

Optical materials and components

Ultrafast and attosecond optics

Extreme nonlinearity and relativistic optics

Ultrahigh power laser technologies

Others

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Optical materials and components

Rapid growth and properties of large-aperture 98%-deuterated DKDP crystals

Xumin Cai, Xiuqing Lin, Guohui Li, Junye Lu, Ziyu Hu, Guozong Zheng. 

High Power Laser Science and Engineering, 2019, 7(3): 03000e46

High damage threshold liquid crystal binary mask for laser beam shaping

Gang Xia, Wei Fan, Dajie Huang, He Cheng, Jiangtao Guo, Xiaoqin Wang. 

High Power Laser Science and Engineering, 2019, 7(1): 010000e9

Band-stop angular filtering with hump volume Bragg gratings

Fan Gao, Xin Wang, Tiancheng Yu, Xiang Zhang, Xiao Yuan. 

High Power Laser Science and Engineering, 2019, 7(2): 02000e29

Cumulative material damage from train of ultrafast infrared laser pulses

A. Hanuka, K. P. Wootton, Z. Wu, K. Soong, I. V. Makasyuk, R. J. England, L. Schächter. 

High Power Laser Science and Engineering, 2019, 7(1): 010000e7

Detection of laser-induced optical defects based on image segmentation

Xinkun Chu, Hao Zhang, Zhiyu Tian, Qing Zhang, Fang Wang, Jing Chen, Yuanchao Geng. 

High Power Laser Science and Engineering, 2019, 7(4): 04000e66

Overview of ytterbium based transparent ceramics for diode pumped high energy solid-state lasers

Samuel Paul David, Venkatesan Jambunathan, Antonio Lucianetti, Tomas Mocek. 

High Power Laser Science and Engineering, 2018, 6(4): 04000e62

Variation of the band structure in DKDP crystal excited by intense sub-picosecond laser pulses

Xiaocong Peng, Yuanan Zhao, Yueliang Wang, Zhen Cao, Guohang Hu, Jianda Shao. 

High Power Laser Science and Engineering, 2018, 6(3): 03000e41

Hexagonal boron nitride nanosheets incorporated antireflective silica coating with enhanced laser-induced damage threshold

Jing Wang, Chunhong Li, Wenjie Hu, Wei Han, Qihua Zhu, Yao Xu. 

High Power Laser Science and Engineering, 2018, 6(2): 02000e26

Corrosion behaviors of the copper alloy electrodes in ArF excimer laser operation process

Xin Guo, Jinbin Ding, Yi Zhou, Yu Wang. 

High Power Laser Science and Engineering, 2018, 6(1): 010000e9

 

Faraday effect measurements of holmium oxide (Ho₂O₃) ceramics-based magneto-optical materials

David Vojna, Ryo Yasuhara, Hiroaki Furuse, Ondrej Slezak, Simon Hutchinson, Antonio Lucianetti, Tomas Mocek, Miroslav Cech. 

High Power Laser Science and Engineering, 2018, 6(1): 010000e2

Fabrication of kW-level chirped and tilted fiber Bragg gratings and filtering of stimulated Raman scattering in high-power CW oscillators

Kerong Jiao, Jian Shu, Hua Shen, Zhiwen Guan, Feiyan Yang, Rihong Zhu. 

High Power Laser Science and Engineering, 2019, 7(2): 02000e31

Preparation of ultra-broadband antireflective coatings for amplifier blast shields by a sol-gel method

Huai Xiong, Bin Shen, Zhiya Chen, Xu Zhang, Haiyuan Li, Yongxing Tang, Lili Hu. 

High Power Laser Science and Engineering, 2017, 5(4): 04000e29

Modeling the mechanical properties of ultra-thin polymer films

Francisco Espinosa-Loza, Michael Stadermann, Chantel Aracne-Ruddle, Rebecca Casey, Philip Miller, Russel Whitesides. 

High Power Laser Science and Engineering, 2017, 5(4): 04000e27

Research and development of new neodymium laser glasses

Dongbing He, Shuai Kang, Liyan Zhang, Lin Chen, Yajun Ding, Qianwen Yin, LiLi Hu. 

High Power Laser Science and Engineering, 2017, 5(1): 010000e1

Ultrafast and attosecond optics

Toward 5.2 μm terawatt few-cycle pulses via optical parametric chirped-pulse amplification with oxide La₃Ga_5.5Nb_0.5O₁₄ crystals

Jinsheng Liu, Jingui Ma, Jing Wang, Peng Yuan, Guoqiang Xie, Liejia Qian. 

High Power Laser Science and Engineering, 2019, 7(4): 04000e61

 

Directly writing binary multi-sector phase plates on fused silica using femtosecond laser

Li Zhou, Youen Jiang, Peng Zhang, Wei Fan, Xuechun Li. 

High Power Laser Science and Engineering, 2018, 6(1): 010000e6

 

Technology development for ultraintense all-OPCPA systems

J. Bromage, S.-W. Bahk, I. A. Begishev, C. Dorrer, M. J. Guardalben, B. N. Hoffman, J. B. Oliver, R. G. Roides, E. M. Schiesser, M. J. Shoup, M. Spilatro, B. Webb, D. Weiner, J. D. Zuegel.

High Power Laser Science and Engineering, 2019, 7(1): 010000e4

 

High-repetition-rate, high-peak-power 1450 nm laser source based on optical parametric chirped pulse amplification

Pengfei Wang, Beijie Shao, Hongpeng Su, Xinlin Lv, Yanyan Li, Yujie Peng, Yuxin Leng. 

High Power Laser Science and Engineering, 2019, 7(2): 02000e32

 

Attosecond twisted beams from high-order harmonic generation driven by optical vortices

Carlos Hernández-García, Laura Rego, Julio San Román, Antonio Picón, Luis Plaja. 

High Power Laser Science and Engineering, 2017, 5(1): 010000e3

Extreme nonlinearity and relativistic optics

Quantum electrodynamics experiments with colliding petawatt laser pulses

I. C. E. Turcu, B. Shen, D. Neely, G. Sarri, K. A. Tanaka, P. McKenna, S. P. D. Mangles, T.-P. Yu, W. Luo, X.-L. Zhu, Y. Yin. 

High Power Laser Science and Engineering, 2019, 7(1): 01000e10

 

High efficiency second harmonic generation of nanojoule-level femtosecond pulses in the visible based on BiBO

Mario Galletti, Hugo Pires, Victor Hariton, Celso Paiva João, Swen Künzel, Marco Galimberti, Gonçalo Figueira. 

High Power Laser Science and Engineering, 2019, 7(1): 01000e11

 

Efficient high harmonics generation by enhancement cavity driven with a post-compressed FCPA laser at 10 MHz

Zhigang Zhao, Akira Ozawa, Makoto Kuwata-Gonokami, Yohei Kobayashi.

High Power Laser Science and Engineering, 2018, 6(2): 02000e19

 

Enhancement of the surface emission at the fundamental frequency and the transmitted high-order harmonics by pre-structured targets

K. Q. Pan, D. Yang, L. Guo, Z. C. Li, S. W. Li, C. Y. Zheng, S. E. Jiang, B. H. Zhang, X. T. He. 

High Power Laser Science and Engineering, 2019, 7(2): 02000e36

 

Nonperturbative generation of above-threshold harmonics from pre-excited argon atoms in intense mid-infrared laser fields

Guihua Li, Hongqiang Xie, Ziting Li, Jinping Yao, Wei Chu, Ya Cheng.

High Power Laser Science and Engineering, 2017, 5(4): 04000e26

Ultrahigh power laser technologies

Performance demonstration of the PENELOPE main amplifier HEPA I using broadband nanosecond pulses

D. Albach, M. Loeser, M. Siebold, U. Schramm. 

High Power Laser Science and Engineering, 2019, 7(1): 010000e1

 

Optimization of the pulse width and injection time in a double-pass laser amplifier

Daewoong Park, Jihoon Jeong, Tae Jun Yu. 

High Power Laser Science and Engineering, 2018, 6(4): 04000e60

 

Suppression of amplitude modulation induced by polarization mode dispersion using a multi-degree-of-freedom fiber filter

Rao Li, Youen Jiang, Zhi Qiao, Canhong Huang, Wei Fan, Xuechun Li, Zunqi Lin. 

High Power Laser Science and Engineering, 2018, 6(4): 04000e53

 

Intra-cycle depolarization of ultraintense laser pulses focused by off-axis parabolic mirrors

Luca Labate, Gianluca Vantaggiato, Leonida A. Gizzi. 

High Power Laser Science and Engineering, 2018, 6(2): 02000e32

 

Linear angular dispersion compensation of cleaned self-diffraction light with a single prism

Xiong Shen, Peng Wang, Jun Liu, Ruxin Li.

High Power Laser Science and Engineering, 2018, 6(2): 02000e23

 

Wavefront control of laser beam using optically addressed liquid crystal modulator

Dajie Huang, Wei Fan, He Cheng, Gang Xia, Lili Pei, Xuechun Li, Zunqi Lin. 

High Power Laser Science and Engineering, 2018, 6(2): 02000e20

 

Improvements in long-term output energy performance of Nd:glass regenerative amplifiers

Peng Zhang, Youen Jiang, Jiangfeng Wang, Wei Fan, Xuechun Li, Jianqiang Zhu. 

High Power Laser Science and Engineering, 2017, 5(4): 04000e23

 

The special shaped laser spot for driving indirect-drive hohlraum with multi-beam incidence

Ping Li, Sai Jin, Runchang Zhao, Wei Wang, Fuquan Li, Mingzhong Li, Jingqin Su, Xiaofeng Wei. 

High Power Laser Science and Engineering, 2017, 5(3): 03000e20

Others

An online diagnosis technique for simultaneous measurement of the fundamental, second and third harmonics in one snapshot

Xue Dong, Xingchen Pan, Cheng Liu, Jianqiang Zhu. 

High Power Laser Science and Engineering, 2019, 7(3): 03000e48

 

Comprehensive investigation on producing high-power orbital angular momentum beams by coherent combining technology

Dong Zhi, Tianyue Hou, Pengfei Ma, Yanxing Ma, Pu Zhou, Rumao Tao, Xiaolin Wang, Lei Si. 

High Power Laser Science and Engineering, 2019, 7(2): 02000e33

 

Simulation and analysis of the time evolution of laser power and temperature in static pulsed XPALs

Chenyi Su, Binglin Shen, Xingqi Xu, Chunsheng Xia, Bailiang Pan. 

High Power Laser Science and Engineering, 2019, 7(3): 03000e44

 

Amplification of 200-ps high-intensity laser pulses via frequency matching stimulated Brillouin scattering

Hang Yuan, Yulei Wang, Qiang Yuan, Dongxia Hu, Can Cui, Zhaohong Liu, Sensen Li, Yi Chen, Feng Jing, Zhiwei Lü. 

High Power Laser Science and Engineering, 2019, 7(3): 03000e41

 

FM-to-AM conversion in angular filtering based on transmitted volume Bragg gratings

Fan Gao, Baoxing Xiong, Xiang Zhang, Xiao Yuan. 

High Power Laser Science and Engineering, 2019, 7(2): 02000e34

 

High-extraction-efficiency, nanosecond bidirectional ring amplifier with twin pulses

Tiancheng Yu, Jiangtao Guo, Gang Xia, Xiang Zhang, Fan Gao, Jiangfeng Wang, Wei Fan, Xiao Yuan. 

High Power Laser Science and Engineering, 2019, 7(2): 02000e30

 

Analysis on FM-to-AM conversion of SSD beam induced by etalon effect in a high-power laser system

Ping Li, Wei Wang, Jingqin Su, Xiaofeng Wei. 

High Power Laser Science and Engineering, 2019, 7(2): 02000e21

 

Sub-40-fs high-power Yb:CALYO laser pumped by single-mode fiber laser

Wenlong Tian, Geyang Wang, Dacheng Zhang, Jiangfeng Zhu, Zhaohua Wang, Xiaodong Xu, Jun Xu, Zhiyi Wei. 

High Power Laser Science and Engineering, 2019, 7(4): 04000e64

 

Highly efficient continuous-wave mid-infrared generation based on intracavity difference frequency mixing

Cheng Xi, Peng Wang, Xiao Li, Zejin Liu.

High Power Laser Science and Engineering, 2019, 7(4): 04000e67

Laser wakefield acceleration (LWFA) is a cutting-edge approach to particle acceleration. When a high intensity short pulse laser travels through the plasma, it will generate wake fields behind the laser pulse. The background electrons can be trapped inside the wakefields and accelerated. The expected acceleration strength can reach up to 100 GeV/m, which is three orders of magnitude higher than the acceleration gradient generated by conventional radio frequency (RF) cavities. In the past two decades, the LWFA experiment has reached some extraordinary improvements. Current laser wakefield accelerators can generate a few hundred MeV electron beams with less than 1% of energy spread. And the electron beam emittance can be suppressed up to 3 mm mrad. Improving the stability of electron beams is still a big challenge for researchers all over the world. The instability of the electron could come from:

Hydrodynamic instability is the fundamental physical challenge for inertial confinement fusion. Implosions can compress fusion fuel to the extreme conditions required for thermonuclear reactions, but at the same time, defects in the laser and target pellet can be amplified during the implosion acceleration, disrupting the spherically symmetric structure of the target pellet and leading to fuel mixing or shell breakup. There are two general ideas for suppressing the instability: First, minimize the initial seed of the instability, which includes precision machining of the target pellet, optical smoothing of the spot, beam overlap optimization, and laser-plasma interaction control. Second, improve the ablation of the interface to suppress the growth of instability, which mainly relies on the ablation layer doping and laser pulse shaping to achieve. Laser pulse shaping is relatively easy to implement in terms of engineering, and can achieve nanosecond level dynamic control during the flight of the target pellets, thus becoming the critical means to suppress instabilities.

Figure 1: Scientists, facility engineers, and administrators of high-power-lasers are faced with many questions related to building new digital infrastructure for facility control and scientific data management.

State-of-the-art Yb-based fiber, Innoslab and thin-disk architectures facilitate efficient and power scalable femtosecond lasers, which, however, do not exhibit sufficient gain bandwidth for pulses shorter than 300 fs. Due to gain narrowing, workhorse Yb-doped crystals such as Yb:YAG and Yb:Tungstate, typically generate pulses of 400 fs to 1 ps pulse duration after chirped pulse amplification. To generate even shorter pulses, other strategies have proven to be viable, such as adoption of disordered media with broader gain bandwidth, combinations of gain media with slightly shifted gain spectra or spectrally coherent synthesis. Nonetheless, the disordered media displays poor thermal conductivity while the other two schemes suffer from complexity. Nonlinear spectral broadening by self-phase modulation (SPM) during propagations in regenerative and multipass amplifiers are impressive alternatives, which, however, demand elaborated control.

High-power fiber lasers have attracted much research interest and been widely employed in tremendous fields for its compact structure, high conversion efficiency and robust operation. However, quantum defect (QD), which is one of the important heat sources in the gain fiber, could result in serious thermal effects (e.g. thermal lens effect, thermal mode instability), additional noise, and even operation security threating of high-power laser system. In hence, continuous efforts have been focused on reducing the QD. Raman fiber laser (RFL) has shown outstanding performance on thermal management and been rapidly developed and widely investigated in recent years. Generally, the QD of RFL is around 5%, which is half of common laser diode (LD)-pumped Yb-doped fiber laser. Employing tens-meters or even km-level passive fiber, RFL can effectively relieve the density of the thermal deposition. Besides, the characteristic of non-photon-darkening enables RFL to maintain stable operation. Accordingly, RFL is a promising alternative on both high-power and low-QD fiber lasers. Up to hundreds watt-level high-power RFLs in all-fiber format have been demonstrated by several independent groups. By adopting a main oscillator power amplifier structure, up to 3 kW RFL has been demonstrated. Usually, the high-power fiber lasers aforementioned have QDs of about 4~5% based on the 13.2 THz frequency shift. To be noted, challenge in power scaling of RFL has also been revealed and observed recently, where further decreasing the QD of RFL is one of the promising solutions for power scaling.

Laser-driven proton source has important application prospects in the fields of tumor therapy, laser fusion and proton imaging. These applications put forward different requirements for the parameters of proton beam, such as energy, divergence angle, laminarity, source size and number, which need to be measured conveniently and accurately in the experiment.

The Extreme Light Infrastructure in Prague, Czech Republic, ELI-Beamlines, engaged in the construction of a one-of-a-kind vacuum beam transport system for the propagation of fully compressed petawatt laser over very long distances.

Original manuscripts are sought to the special issue on "Future Control Systems and Machine Learning at High Power Laser Facilities" of High Power Laser Science and Engineering (HPL),

Special Issue on Inertial Confinement Fusion|Calls for papers!

Since its launch in 2013, High Power Laser Science and Engineering (HPLSE) has now been published for 10 years. Supported by the founding Co-Editors-in-Chief Zunqi Lin and Colin Danson, the subsequent Co-Editor-in-Chief Jianqiang Zhu and other extraordinary Editorial Board members, HPLSE rapidly obtained its reputation in the high power laser community. So far, more than 450 papers from 430 institutions in 32 countries have been published in HPLSE. We appreciate the contributions made by authors and reviewers, which have led to the continued success of our journal. HPLSE is now one of the most important journals in the field of high power lasers.

Special Issue on High Energy Density Physics and High Power Lasers 2021

Original manuscripts are sought to the special issue on X-ray Free Electron Lasers (XFELs) of High Power Laser Science and Engineering (HPL).

It is well known that this year is the 60th anniversary of the first laser operation by Ted Maiman on 16 May 1960. To celebrate this important event, HPL initiates to organize a feature collection of articles to recognize the 60th anniversary. For this purpose, we invite pioneers in the laser area to contribute review, commentary or research articles on laser development and applications.

High Power Laser Science and Engineering is pleased to announce a special issue on Target Fabrication. The scope of this special issue is to highlight important new results and the latest developments related to target fabrication and reviews on topics related to their deployment on ultra-high-energy/power laser facilities.