Laser and Particle Beams For issue 42005激光与粒子束问题42005.docVIP

Laser and Particle Beams For issue 4/2005 Petawatt-Picosecond Laser-Plasma Interaction and Subrelativistic Plasma-Block Generation Heinrich Hora* Department of Theoretical Physics, University of New South Wales, Sydney 2052, Australia Some preliminary views are presented to the topic “Fast High Density Plasma Blocks Driven by Picosecond Terawatt Lasers” of the UWS-International Workshop 1-4 December 2004 in Sydney/Australia underlining the motivation to explain the difference between the relativistic and the subrelativistic effects of ps-laser pulse interaction with plasma at powers above TW. This refers to specifically selected experimental and theoretical presentations at the workshop (Osman 2005) containing results for explaining the differences but also the important applications for studies on the fast ignitor scheme for application on nuclear fusion energy. One of the aims with relativistic proton beams is to realize conditions of spark ignition, while the subrelativistic case implies the generation of fast plasma blocks eventually with the possibility to ignite a fusion flame in uncompressed solid DT fuel for a power station with high efficiency. INTRODUCTION A new aera in laser-plasma interaction has been opened with the advent of the petawatt-picosecond laser pulses (Parry Mourou 1994) based on the chirped pulse amplification (CPA) discovered by Mourou or excimer lasers (Sch?fer 1986, Teubner et al 1993) which applications are stimultating numerous fields. These are - the laser generation of energetic, highly charged ions for sources in accelerators (Haseroth et al 1996) or for ion implantation (Boody et al 1996, Sari et al 2005), the tabletop electron beam generators (Hora, Hoelss et al 2000, Hartemann et al 1998), the broad stream research for gaining clean, safe, unlimited, and low-cost energy from nuclear fusion in the future (see following section 2), for basic physics e.g. by zetawatt laser pulses (Mourou Tajima 2002) where