Self-focusing and its related interactions at very high laser intensities for fast ignition at Osaka University

At the Institute of Laser Engineering, various type of experiments related to fast ignition were performed with the 12-beam laser system GEKKO XII and the newly added 100 TW beams line. Using both X-ray and UV laser probes, drilling via ponderomotive laser light self-focusing was studied to show drilling well into the overdense plasma over a distance of 100 μ m at a self-focused laser intensity of 10¹⁸ W / cm ² . This type of self-focusing accelerated electrons up to 0.1 to 1 MeV and was also applied to an imploding shell.