Fast Ignition Research at the Institute of Laser Engineering, Osaka University

Abstract

Fast ignition related studies were conducted at the Institute of Laser Engineering, Osaka University. Hot electron production was shown to have enough energy with a good conversion efficiency. Electrons were ejected mainly toward the forward direction. A sophisticated gold cone was inserted to a CD shell to guide a fast heating pulse to a compressed plasma core. The guide cone plays a role to avoid any strongly nonlinear interaction of the heating laser pulse with the surrounding plasma. The results were very interesting to show that the neutron was increased more than 100 times when the PW fast heating laser pulse enforced heating on the core plasma.