Oscillator and system development on the VULCAN glass laser system for the Plasma Beat-wave program

SIGLEAvailable from British Library Document Supply Centre- DSC:8053.4153(RAL--90-011) / BLDSC - British Library Document Supply CentreGBUnited Kingdo

VULCAN A versitile high power glass laser user facility

SIGLEAvailable from British Library Document Supply Centre- DSC:8053.4153(RAL--89-121) / BLDSC - British Library Document Supply CentreGBUnited Kingdo

Breakthrough at the NIF paves the way to inertial fusion energy

In August 2021, at the National Ignition Facility of the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in the USA, a 1.35 MJ fusion yield was obtained. It is a demonstration of the validity of the Inertial Confinement Fusion approach to achieve energy-efficient thermonuclear fusion in the laboratory. It is a historical milestone that the scientific community has achieved after decades of efforts

Coherence and bandwidth measurements of harmonics generated from solid surfaces irradiated by intense picosecond laser pulses

We present measurements of the transverse and longitudinal coherence lengths of the fourth harmonic of a 1053-nm, 2.5-ps laser generated during high-intensity (up to 1019 W cm-2) interactions with a solid target. Coherence lengths were measured by use of a Young's double-slit interferometer. The effective source size, as defined by the Van Cittert-Zernicke theorem, was found to be 10-12 μm, and the coherence time was observed to be in the range 0.02-0.4 ps