The Oxford Atomic and Laser Physics webinar series welcomes Sébastien Le Pape (LULI).
Fusion energy has been the driven force in the High Energy Density (HED) community for more than fifty years but especially since the start of the National Ignition Campaign in 2009 on the National Ignition facility (LLNL, USA). The National Ignition Campaign, though a marvel in term of laser technology and data quality in this challenging regime, has failed to achieve ignition. This failure has shed lights on gaps of our understanding of fundamental plasma properties such as thermal transport or emissivity. In this talk I will go over the achievement of the fusion program at LLNL and the main question that still needs to be answer. I will also present new initiatives in Europe aimed at fusion energy.
Fusion energy has not been the only driving force of the HED community, high power lasers have also made possible to reach plasma conditions that are relevant to astrophysical systems such as supernovae remnants or stellar opacities for example, leading to the growing field of laboratory astrophysics. Here, I will present the main results obtained in this field at LULI (France) and future projects on large scale facilities such as the National Ignition Facility or the laser megaJoule.
LULI2000 – Laboratory photoionized plasma (S. Le Pape)
S-LePape Research while at Ecole Polytechnique
Passcode: ALPhysics