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A brief review of the history of power compression over a range encompassing approximately 40 orders of magnitude places laser–nuclear interactions roughly at the logarithmic midpoint of the scale at approximately 1020 W/cm3. The historical picture also motivates four conclusions, specifically, that (1) foreseen developments in power compression will enable laser-induced coupling to all nuclei,...
A visible laser beam can be used to set neutrons free, to induce the fusion between nuclei, or even to fission a nucleus. The energy of one laser photon is about 1 eV, whereas the energy required to fission a uranium nucleus amounts to 10 million electronvolts. How can that be?
Nearly 30 ago, laser physicists dreamed of the laser as a particle accelerator [1]. With the acceleration of electrons, protons, and ions up to energies of several tens of MeV by the interaction of an intense laser pulse with matter, this dream has become reality within the last ten years. Today, highly intense laser systems drive microscopic accelerators. Nuclear reactions are induced by...
After the invention of the technique of chirped pulse amplification (CPA) [1] we have witnessed a tremendous progress in laser development over the last years. Nowadays, pulses having peak powers in the terawatt (TW) regime can be produced using table-top laser systems that easily fit into university-scale laboratories and operate at repetition rates of 10 Hz and more. These pulses can be...
The French Commissariat à l’Energie Atomique (CEA) is currently building the Laser Megajoule (LMJ), a 240-beam laser facility, at the CEA Laboratory CESTA near Bordeaux. The LMJ will be a cornerstone of the CEA’s “Programme Simulation,” the French Stockpile Stewardship Program. It is designed to deliver 1.8 MJ of 0.35 μm light to targets for high-energy-density physics experiments, among...
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