Present Status and Future Prospects of IFE and High Power Laser Researches in Asia

摘要

The status and future prospects of the IFE research and high power laser applications in Asia are reviewed. In IFE research at Osaka, the Gekko XII and the Petawatt laser system have been used for investigating implosion hydrodynamics, fast ignition, and relativistic laser plasma interactions. In particular, fast ignition experiments with cone shell target have been carried out as joint UK-Japan and US-Japan collaboration programs. In the experiments, imploded high-density plasmas are heated by a 500J level PW laser pulse. The thermal neutron yield is found to increase by three orders of magnitude by the PW laser injection to the cone shell target. The laser plasma physics related to laser fusion and other applications have been studied at many institutes in Asia. Areas of research include, Rayleigh-Taylor instability experiments, use of extreme ultra violet radiation sources for lithography, laser particle acceleration and X-ray lasers, to name a few.