The first demonstration of laser action in ruby was made in 1960 by T. H. Maiman of Hughes Research Laboratories, USA. Many laboratories worldwide began the search for lasers using different materials, operating at different wavelengths. In the UK, academia, industry and the central laboratories took up the challenge from the earliest days to develop these systems for a broad range of applications. This historical review looks at the contribution the UK has made to the advancement of the technology, the development of systems and components and their exploitation over the last 60 years.

The paper describes the adaptation and psychometric evaluation of the Hungarian version of the quality of life in depression scale. The adaptation procedure involved: bilingual translation; field-testing for face and content validity; and assessment of instrument's reliability and construct validity. The new language version was shown to be well-accepted by respondents and to have excellent psychometric properties.

This workshop aims to make progress in the knowledge of the cognitive symptoms and her evaluation in the psychotic diseases. Schizophrenia begins in late adolescence causing a derailment of social, educational, and occupational pursuits that extends to the end of life. The psychosocial costs contribute to the extraordinary public health care costs of this illness. Alleviation of the positive symptoms, negative symptoms, depression, and anxiety is insufficient to restore psychosocial status. An improvement in social, educational, and occupational status is dependent on improvement in cognitive status.

Primary Prof. JE Rojo & O. Pino will emphasize the relevant aspects of the neuropsychological evaluation in clinical practice, and relationships between cognitive, clinical, psychosocial status and social performance in patients with psychosis dysfunction.

Although vital to prognosis, cognitive status is often neglected in clinical practice because neuropsychological assessments are expensive and time consuming, and they require considerable expertise. The Screen for Cognitive Impairment in Psychiatry (SCIP) is a 10 to 15 minute assessment of cognitive status developed to encourage routine assessment of cognitive status in clinical practice, and to promote research on the alleviation of cognitive impairments in psychiatric illness. Prof. Purdon will briefly review the rational for a brief assessment of cognitive status. He will present evidence supporting the comparability of three alternate forms of the SCIP from three Canadian normative samples and one large clinical sample. He will also present evidence supporting the validity of the brief screening tool relative to a comprehensive assessment of neuropsychological status in a large sample of psychiatric inpatients. The primary objective will be to encourage the use of the SCIP in routine clinical practice.

Afterwards, Prof. P. McKenna try to describe the new research strategies and methods of investigation in neuropsychology and schizophrenia, the state of art more novelty and relevant.

The measurement of thin film mechanical properties free from substrate influence remains one of the outstanding challenges in nanomechanics. Here, a technique based on indentation of a supported film with a flat punch whose diameter is many times the initial film thickness is introduced. This geometry generates a state of confined uniaxial strain for material beneath the punch, allowing direct access to intrinsic stress versus strain response. For simple elastic–plastic materials, this enables material parameters such as elastic modulus, bulk modulus, Poisson's ratio, and yield stress to be simultaneously determined from a single loading curve. The phenomenon of confined plastic yield has not been previously observed in thin films or homogeneous materials, which we demonstrate here for 170 -470 nm thick polystyrene (PS), polymethyl-methacrylate (PMMA) and amorphous Selenium films on silicon. As well as performing full elastic -plastic parameter extraction for these materials at room temperature, we used the technique to study the variation of yield stress in PS to temperatures above the nominal glass transition of 100 °C.

The use of targets with surface structures for laser-driven particle acceleration has potential to significantly boost the particle and radiation energies because of enhanced laser absorption. We investigate, via experiment and particle-in-cell simulations, the impact of micron-scale surface-structured targets on the spectrum of electrons and protons accelerated by a picosecond laser pulse at relativistic intensity. Our results show that, compared with flat-surfaced targets, structures on this scale give rise to a significant enhancement in particle and radiation emission over a wide range of laser–target interaction parameters. This is due to the longer plasma scale length when using micro-structures on the target front surface. We do not observe an increase in the proton cutoff energy with our microstructured targets, and this is due to the large volume of the relief.

Laser–solid interactions are highly suited as a potential source of high energy X-rays for nondestructive imaging. A bright, energetic X-ray pulse can be driven from a small source, making it ideal for high resolution X-ray radiography. By limiting the lateral dimensions of the target we are able to confine the region over which X-rays are produced, enabling imaging with enhanced resolution and contrast. Using constrained targets we demonstrate experimentally a $(20\pm 3)~\unicode[STIX]{x03BC}\text{m}$ X-ray source, improving the image quality compared to unconstrained foil targets. Modelling demonstrates that a larger sheath field envelope around the perimeter of the constrained targets increases the proportion of electron current that recirculates through the target, driving a brighter source of X-rays.

A new generation of high power laser facilities will provide laser pulses with extremely high powers of 10 petawatt (PW) and even 100 PW, capable of reaching intensities of $10^{23}~\text{W}/\text{cm}^{2}$ in the laser focus. These ultra-high intensities are nevertheless lower than the Schwinger intensity $I_{S}=2.3\times 10^{29}~\text{W}/\text{cm}^{2}$ at which the theory of quantum electrodynamics (QED) predicts that a large part of the energy of the laser photons will be transformed to hard Gamma-ray photons and even to matter, via electron–positron pair production. To enable the investigation of this physics at the intensities achievable with the next generation of high power laser facilities, an approach involving the interaction of two colliding PW laser pulses is being adopted. Theoretical simulations predict strong QED effects with colliding laser pulses of ${\geqslant}10~\text{PW}$ focused to intensities ${\geqslant}10^{22}~\text{W}/\text{cm}^{2}$ .

After a population of laser-driven hot electrons traverses a limited thickness solid target, these electrons will encounter the rear surface, creating TV/m fields that heavily influence the subsequent hot-electron propagation. Electrons that fail to overcome the electrostatic potential reflux back into the target. Those electrons that do overcome the field will escape the target. Here, using the particle-in-cell (PIC) code EPOCH and particle tracking of a large population of macro-particles, we investigate the refluxing and escaping electron populations, as well as the magnitude, spatial and temporal evolution of the rear surface electrostatic fields. The temperature of both the escaping and refluxing electrons is reduced by 30%–50% when compared to the initial hot-electron temperature as a function of intensity between $10^{19}$ and $10^{21}~~\text{W}/\text{cm}^{2}$ . Using particle tracking we conclude that the highest energy internal hot electrons are guaranteed to escape up to a threshold energy, below which only a small fraction are able to escape the target. We also examine the temporal characteristic of energy changes of the refluxing and escaping electrons and show that the majority of the energy change is as a result of the temporally evolving electric field that forms on the rear surface.

A multichannel calorimeter system is designed and constructed which is capable of delivering single-shot and broad-band spectral measurement of terahertz (THz) radiation generated in intense laser–plasma interactions. The generation mechanism of backward THz radiation (BTR) is studied by using the multichannel calorimeter system in an intense picosecond laser–solid interaction experiment. The dependence of the BTR energy and spectrum on laser energy, target thickness and pre-plasma scale length is obtained. These results indicate that coherent transition radiation is responsible for the low-frequency component ( ${<}$ 1 THz) of BTR. It is also observed that a large-scale pre-plasma primarily enhances the high-frequency component ( ${>}$ 3 THz) of BTR.

Filamentary structures can form within the beam of protons accelerated during the interaction of an intense laser pulse with an ultrathin foil target. Such behaviour is shown to be dependent upon the formation time of quasi-static magnetic field structures throughout the target volume and the extent of the rear surface proton expansion over the same period. This is observed via both numerical and experimental investigations. By controlling the intensity profile of the laser drive, via the use of two temporally separated pulses, both the initial rear surface proton expansion and magnetic field formation time can be varied, resulting in modification to the degree of filamentary structure present within the laser-driven proton beam.

The spatial-intensity profile of light reflected during the interaction of an intense laser pulse with a microstructured target is investigated experimentally and the potential to apply this as a diagnostic of the interaction physics is explored numerically. Diffraction and speckle patterns are measured in the specularly reflected light in the cases of targets with regular groove and needle-like structures, respectively, highlighting the potential to use this as a diagnostic of the evolving plasma surface. It is shown, via ray-tracing and numerical modelling, that for a laser focal spot diameter smaller than the periodicity of the target structure, the reflected light patterns can potentially be used to diagnose the degree of plasma expansion, and by extension the local plasma temperature, at the focus of the intense laser light. The reflected patterns could also be used to diagnose the size of the laser focal spot during a high-intensity interaction when using a regular structure with known spacing.

Giant electromagnetic pulses (EMP) generated during the interaction of high-power lasers with solid targets can seriously degrade electrical measurements and equipment. EMP emission is caused by the acceleration of hot electrons inside the target, which produce radiation across a wide band from DC to terahertz frequencies. Improved understanding and control of EMP is vital as we enter a new era of high repetition rate, high intensity lasers (e.g. the Extreme Light Infrastructure). We present recent data from the VULCAN laser facility that demonstrates how EMP can be readily and effectively reduced. Characterization of the EMP was achieved using B-dot and D-dot probes that took measurements for a range of different target and laser parameters. We demonstrate that target stalk geometry, material composition, geodesic path length and foil surface area can all play a significant role in the reduction of EMP. A combination of electromagnetic wave and 3D particle-in-cell simulations is used to inform our conclusions about the effects of stalk geometry on EMP, providing an opportunity for comparison with existing charge separation models.

Two signatures of quantum effects on radiation reaction in the collision of a ${\sim}$ GeV electron beam with a high intensity ( ${>}3\times 10^{20}~\text{W}~\text{cm}^{-2}$ ) laser pulse have been considered. We show that the decrease in the average energy of the electron beam may be used to measure the Gaunt factor $g$ for synchrotron emission. We derive an equation for the evolution of the variance in the energy of the electron beam in the quantum regime, i.e. quantum efficiency parameter $\unicode[STIX]{x1D702}\not \ll 1$ . We show that the evolution of the variance may be used as a direct measure of the quantum stochasticity of the radiation reaction and determine the parameter regime where this is observable. For example, stochastic emission results in a 25 % increase in the standard deviation of the energy spectrum of a GeV electron beam, 1 fs after it collides with a laser pulse of intensity $10^{21}~\text{W}~\text{cm}^{-2}$ . This effect should therefore be measurable using current high-intensity laser systems.