A 10-petawatt laser pulse—more powerful than the entire National Grid for a split second—will soon be fired at solid targets inside the UK’s Central Laser Facility, creating plasmas with properties never before seen on Earth. This project tackles a fundamental gap in physics: no one has yet been able to study how matter behaves when laser intensities become so extreme that electrons in the plasma move at nearly the speed of light and are governed by Einstein’s relativity. Existing models break down in this “strongly relativistic” regime, so the team will run experiments to see what actually happens. The work is pure fundamental science—there is no immediate practical application. But understanding these interactions could eventually underpin new ways to accelerate ions and generate radiation using tabletop lasers, rather than kilometre-long accelerators. Past fundamental laser-plasma research has already led to compact X-ray sources used in medical imaging and materials inspection. If this project succeeds, it may open a similar path toward smaller, cheaper particle sources for cancer therapy or nuclear waste treatment—though those uses remain years away.
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The interaction of intense laser pulses with matter is opening up new frontiers in physics via the production of extreme pressures, temperatures and intense electric and magnetic fields. This is leading to the use of high power laser radiation for exploring the properties of hot dense matter, the production of high energy particles and radiation, and the development of schemes to generate energy by inertial confinement fusion. These advances are driven by rapid developments in ultrashort pulse laser technology which have enabled new regimes in laser power and intensity to be reached. With the advent of multi-petawatt power lasers (e.g. the upgrade project to the Vulcan laser at the UK's Central Laser Facility will deliver 10 petawatt pulses by 2013-2014) exotic new plasmas with unique properties are accessible, including strongly relativistic dense plasma. The principal aims of this proposed project are to investigate the fundamentals of laser-solid interactions in strongly relativistic plasmas - a regime of laser-plasma interactions not previously accessible - and to harness predicted promising new ion acceleration schemes achievable with ultrahigh intensity laser pulses. This will advance our understanding of ultrahigh intensity laser solid interactions and may lead to new applications of laser-plasma-based particle and radiation sources. The proposal involves the development and application of new techniques on experiments using some of the highest power laser systems available.
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