A pulsed fast neutron source is critical for applications of fast neutron resonance radiography and fast neutron absorption spectroscopy. However, due to the large transversal source size (of the order of mm) and long pulse duration (of the order of ns) of traditional pulsed fast neutron sources, it is difficult to realize high-contrast neutron imaging with high spatial resolution and a fine absorption spectrum. Here, we experimentally present a micro-size ultra-short pulsed neutron source by a table-top laser–plasma wakefield electron accelerator driving a photofission reaction in a thin metal converter. A fast neutron source with source size of approximately 500 μm and duration of approximately 36 ps has been driven by a tens of MeV, collimated, micro-size electron beam via a hundred TW laser facility. This micro-size ultra-short pulsed neutron source has the potential to improve the energy resolution of a fast neutron absorption spectrum dozens of times to, for example, approximately 100 eV at 1.65 MeV, which could be of benefit for high-quality fast neutron imaging and deep understanding of the theoretical model of neutron physics.

High-power orbital angular momentum (OAM) beams have distinct advantages in improving capacity and data receiving for free-space optical communication systems at long distances. Utilizing the coherent combination of a beam array technique and helical phase approximation by a piston phase array, we have proposed a generating system for a novel high-power beam carrying OAM, which could overcome the power limitations of a common vortex phase modulator and a single beam. The characteristics of this generating method and the orthogonality of the generated OAM beams with different eigenstates have been theoretically analyzed and verified. Also a high-power OAM beam produced by coherent beam combination (CBC) of a six-element hexagonal fiber amplifier array has been experimentally implemented. Results show that the CBC technique utilized to control the piston phase differences among the array beams has a high efficiency of 96.3%. On the premise of CBC, we have obtained novel vortex beams carrying OAM of $\pm 1$ by applying an additional piston phase array modulation on the corresponding beam array. The experimental results agree approximately with the theoretical analysis. This work could be beneficial to areas that need high-power OAM beams, such as ultra-long distance free-space optical communications, biomedical treatments, and powerful trapping and manipulation under deep potential wells.

The energy transfer by stimulated Brillouin backscatter from a long pump pulse (15 ps) to a short seed pulse (1 ps) has been investigated in a proof-of-principle demonstration experiment. The two pulses were both amplified in different beamlines of a Nd:glass laser system, had a central wavelength of 1054 nm and a spectral bandwidth of 2 nm, and crossed each other in an underdense plasma in a counter-propagating geometry, off-set by $\def \xmlpi #1{}\def \mathsfbi #1{\boldsymbol {\mathsf {#1}}}\let \le =\leqslant \let \leq =\leqslant \let \ge =\geqslant \let \geq =\geqslant \def \Pr {\mathit {Pr}}\def \Fr {\mathit {Fr}}\def \Rey {\mathit {Re}}10^\circ $. It is shown that the energy transfer and the wavelength of the generated Brillouin peak depend on the plasma density, the intensity of the laser pulses, and the competition between two-plasmon decay and stimulated Raman scatter instabilities. The highest obtained energy transfer from pump to probe pulse is 2.5%, at a plasma density of $0.17 n_{cr}$, and this energy transfer increases significantly with plasma density. Therefore, our results suggest that much higher efficiencies can be obtained when higher densities (above $0.25 n_{cr}$) are used.

We report here a high-power, wavelength tunable and narrow linewidth $1.5~\unicode[STIX]{x03BC}\text{m}$ all-fiber laser amplifier based on a tunable diode laser and Er-Yb co-doped fibers. The laser wavelength can be precisely tuned from 1535 nm to 1580 nm, which covers many absorption lines of mid-infrared laser gases, such as $\text{C}_{2}\text{H}_{2}$, HCN, CO, and HI. The maximum laser power is ${>}$11 W, and the linewidth is about 200–300 MHz, which is close to the absorption linewidth of the above-mentioned gases. This work provides a suitable pump source for high-power wavelength tunable mid-infrared fiber gas lasers based on low-loss hollow-core fibers.

Attosecond soft X-ray pulses are of great importance for the study of ultrafast electronic phenomena. In this paper, a feasible method is proposed to generate isolated fully coherent attosecond soft X-ray free electron laser via optical frequency beating. Two optical lasers with the opposite frequency chirps are used to induce a gradient frequency energy modulation, which helps to generate a gradually varied spacing electron pulse train. Subsequently, the undulator sections with electron beam delay lines are used to amplify the target ultra-short radiation. Numerical start-to-end simulations have been performed and the results demonstrate that an isolated soft X-ray pulse with the peak power of 330 GW and pulse duration of 620 as can be achieved by the proposed technique.

We demonstrate a diode-pumped femtosecond Yb:CaGdAlO4 (Yb:CALGO) laser with a semiconductor saturable absorber mirror (SESAM) for stable mode-locking operation. A perfect beam profile is measured under 10 W output power with $M_{x}^{2}$ = 1.017 and $M_{y}^{2}$ = 1.016 in the horizontal and vertical directions, respectively. At the repetition rate of 71.66 MHz, the optical pulse duration is 247 fs and the pulse energy is 140 nJ at the central wavelength of 1041 nm, corresponding to a peak power of 0.56 MW. In addition, we also generate continuous wave (CW) power of more than 15 W with TEM00 mode, corresponding to an optical-to-optical efficiency of 44.1%.

The collective response of electrons in an ultrathin foil target irradiated by an ultraintense (${\sim}6\times 10^{20}~\text{W}~\text{cm}^{-2}$) laser pulse is investigated experimentally and via 3D particle-in-cell simulations. It is shown that if the target is sufficiently thin that the laser induces significant radiation pressure, but not thin enough to become relativistically transparent to the laser light, the resulting relativistic electron beam is elliptical, with the major axis of the ellipse directed along the laser polarization axis. When the target thickness is decreased such that it becomes relativistically transparent early in the interaction with the laser pulse, diffraction of the transmitted laser light occurs through a so called ‘relativistic plasma aperture’, inducing structure in the spatial-intensity profile of the beam of energetic electrons. It is shown that the electron beam profile can be modified by variation of the target thickness and degree of ellipticity in the laser polarization.

The optimum parameters for the generation of synchrotron radiation in ultraintense laser pulse interactions with planar foils are investigated with the application of Bayesian optimization, via Gaussian process regression, to 2D particle-in-cell simulations. Individual properties of the synchrotron emission, such as the yield, are maximized, and simultaneous mitigation of bremsstrahlung emission is achieved with multi-variate objective functions. The angle-of-incidence of the laser pulse onto the target is shown to strongly influence the synchrotron yield and angular profile, with oblique incidence producing the optimal results. This is further explored in 3D simulations, in which additional control of the spatial profile of synchrotron emission is demonstrated by varying the polarization of the laser light. The results demonstrate the utility of applying a machine learning-based optimization approach and provide new insights into the physics of radiation generation in laser–foil interactions, which will inform the design of experiments in the quantum electrodynamics (QED)-plasma regime.

In the laser plasma interaction of quantum electrodynamics (QED)-dominated regime, γ-rays are generated due to synchrotron radiation from high-energy electrons traveling in a strong background electromagnetic field. With the aid of 2D particle-in-cell code including QED physics, we investigate the preplasma effect on the γ-ray generation during the interaction between an ultraintense laser pulse and solid targets. We found that with the increasing preplasma scale length, the γ-ray emission is enhanced significantly and finally reaches a steady state. Meanwhile, the γ-ray beam becomes collimated. This shows that, in some cases, the preplasmas will be piled up acting as a plasma mirror in the underdense preplasma region, where the γ-rays are produced by the collision between the forward electrons and the reflected laser fields from the piled plasma. The piled plasma plays the same role as the usual reflection mirror made from a solid target. Thus, a single solid target with proper scale length preplasma can serve as a manufactural and robust γ-ray source.

The interaction of intense, ultrashort laser pulses with ordered nanostructure arrays offers a path to the efficient creation of ultra-high-energy density (UHED) matter and the generation of high-energy particles with compact lasers. Irradiation of deuterated nanowires arrays results in a near-solid density environment with extremely high temperatures and large electromagnetic fields in which deuterons are accelerated to multi-megaelectronvolt energies, resulting in deuterium–deuterium (D–D) fusion. Here we focus on the method of fabrication and the characteristics of ordered arrays of deuterated polyethylene nanowires. The irradiation of these array targets with femtosecond pulses of relativistic intensity and joule-level energy creates a micro-scale fusion environment that produced $2\times {10}^6$ neutrons per joule, an increase of about 500 times with respect to flat solid CD2 targets irradiated with the same laser pulses. Irradiation with 8 J laser pulses was measured to generate up to 1.2 × 107 D–D fusion neutrons per shot.

FM-to-AM conversion for angular filtering based on transmitted volume Bragg gratings (TBGs) is discussed. Simulation results show that a narrower spectral selectivity of TBGs led to stronger FM-to-AM conversion. Good angular selectivity and a wide bandwidth for the TBGs can be obtained by controlling the grating period and thickness. FM-to-AM conversion can be effectively suppressed and the distortion criterion for the filtered beam reduces to less than 5%. FM-to-AM conversion of TBGs is demonstrated in the ‘Shenguang’ facility, and the results are in good agreement with the simulation.

The objective of the Apollon 10 PW project is the generation of 10 PW peak power pulses of 15 fs at $1~\text{shot}~\text{min}^{-1}$. In this paper a brief update on the current status of the Apollon project is presented, followed by a more detailed presentation of our experimental and theoretical investigations of the temporal characteristics of the laser. More specifically the design considerations as well as the technological and physical limitations to achieve the intended pulse duration and contrast are discussed.

A high power laser system was used to drive the ignition of inertial confinement fusion (ICF), of which the high energy, the uniform focal spot, the accurate laser waveform, and the synchronization between the laser beams are key parameters. To accomplish this, global laser characteristics control should be assured, which was the main purpose of the injection laser system. In this paper, the key technological progress involved in the improvement of the performance of the injection laser of SG-II is reported, including frequency domain control, time domain control, near-field spatial shaping, pre-amplifier technology, and the optical parametric chirped pulse amplification pump source.

There are several petawatt-scale laser facilities around the world and the fidelity of the pulses to target is critical in achieving the highest focused intensities and the highest possible contrast. The United Kingdom has three such laser facilities which are currently open for access to the academic community: Orion at AWE, Aldermaston and Vulcan & Astra-Gemini at the Central Laser Facility (CLF), STFC (Science and Technology Facilities Council) Rutherford Appleton Laboratory (RAL). These facilities represent the two main classes of petawatt facilities: the mixed OPCPA/Nd:glass high-energy systems of Orion and Vulcan and the ultra-short-pulse Ti:Sapphire system of Astra-Gemini. Many of the techniques used to enhance and control the pulse generation and delivery to target have been pioneered on these facilities. In this paper, we present the system designs which make this possible and discuss the contrast enhancement schemes that have been implemented.

In this work, we propose and verify experimentally a model that describes the concomitant influence of the beam size and optical roughness on the temporal contrast of optical pulses passing through a pulse stretcher in chirped-pulse amplification laser systems. We develop an analytical model that is capable of predicting the rising edge caused by the reflection from an optical element in a pulse stretcher, based on the power spectral density of the surface and the spatial beam profile on the surface. In an experimental campaign, we characterize the temporal contrast of a laser pulse that passed through either a folded or an unfolded stretcher design and compare these results with the analytical model. By varying the beam size for both setups, we verify that optical elements in the near- and the far-field act opposed to each with respect to the temporal contrast and that the rising edge caused by a surface benefits from a larger spatial beam size on that surface.

We report on a high-repetition-rate, high-power continuously pumped Nd:GdVO4 regenerative amplifier. Numerical simulations successfully pinpoint the optimum working point free of bifurcation instability with simultaneous efficient energy extraction. At a repetition rate of 100 kHz, a maximum output power of 23 W was obtained with a pulse duration of 27 ps, corresponding to a pulse energy of $230~\unicode[STIX]{x03BC}\text{J}$. The system displayed an outstanding stability with a root mean square power noise as low as 0.3%. The geometry of the optical resonator and the pumping scheme enhanced output power in the $\text{TEM}_{00}$ mode with a single bulk crystal. Accordingly, nearly diffraction-limited beam quality was produced with $M^{2}\approx 1.2$ at full pump power.

The interaction of relativistically intense lasers with opaque targets represents a highly non-linear, multi-dimensional parameter space. This limits the utility of sequential 1D scanning of experimental parameters for the optimization of secondary radiation, although to-date this has been the accepted methodology due to low data acquisition rates. High repetition-rate (HRR) lasers augmented by machine learning present a valuable opportunity for efficient source optimization. Here, an automated, HRR-compatible system produced high-fidelity parameter scans, revealing the influence of laser intensity on target pre-heating and proton generation. A closed-loop Bayesian optimization of maximum proton energy, through control of the laser wavefront and target position, produced proton beams with equivalent maximum energy to manually optimized laser pulses but using only 60% of the laser energy. This demonstration of automated optimization of laser-driven proton beams is a crucial step towards deeper physical insight and the construction of future radiation sources.

A new target design is presented to model high-energy radiative accretion shocks in polars. In this paper, we present the experimental results obtained on the GEKKO XII laser facility for the POLAR project. The experimental results are compared with 2D FCI2 simulations to characterize the dynamics and the structure of plasma flow before and after the collision. The good agreement between simulations and experimental data confirms the formation of a reverse shock where cooling losses start modifying the post-shock region. With the multi-material structure of the target, a hydrodynamic collimation is exhibited and a radiative structure coupled with the reverse shock is highlighted in both experimental data and simulations. The flexibility of the laser energy produced on GEKKO XII allowed us to produce high-velocity flows and study new and interesting radiation hydrodynamic regimes between those obtained on the LULI2000 and Orion laser facilities.

We propose a general methodology to define the optimum doping ion volume distribution required for an efficient solid-state laser amplifier. This approach is illustrated in the context of two experimental diode pumped Yb:YAG amplifiers operating at 300 and 160 K. Processing of such tailored gain media is now possible through horizontal direct crystallization.

Measured highly elevated gains of proton–boron (HB11) fusion (Picciotto et al., Phys. Rev. X 4, 031030 (2014)) confirmed the exceptional avalanche reaction process (Lalousis et al., Laser Part. Beams 32, 409 (2014); Hora et al., Laser Part. Beams 33, 607 (2015)) for the combination of the non-thermal block ignition using ultrahigh intensity laser pulses of picoseconds duration. The ultrahigh acceleration above $10^{20}~\text{cm}~\text{s}^{-2}$ for plasma blocks was theoretically and numerically predicted since 1978 (Hora, Physics of Laser Driven Plasmas (Wiley, 1981), pp. 178 and 179) and measured (Sauerbrey, Phys. Plasmas 3, 4712 (1996)) in exact agreement (Hora et al., Phys. Plasmas 14, 072701 (2007)) when the dominating force was overcoming thermal processes. This is based on Maxwell’s stress tensor by the dielectric properties of plasma leading to the nonlinear (ponderomotive) force $f_{\text{NL}}$ resulting in ultra-fast expanding plasma blocks by a dielectric explosion. Combining this with measured ultrahigh magnetic fields and the avalanche process opens an option for an environmentally absolute clean and economic boron fusion power reactor. This is supported also by other experiments with very high HB11 reactions under different conditions (Labaune et al., Nature Commun. 4, 2506 (2013)).