B. E. Wyborn

The Vulcan 10 PW project

The aim of this project is to establish a 10 PW facility on the Vulcan laser system capable of being focussed to intensities of at least 1023 Wcm−2 and integrate this into a flexible and unique user facility This paper will present progress made in Phase one developing the 10PW Front End as well as the concept for the new Vulcan 10 PW facility. The new facility will be configured in a unique way to maximise the scientific opportunities presented through a combination with the existing capabilities already established on Vulcan. This ground breaking development will open up a range of new scientific opportunities.

Commissioning the Astra Gemini petawatt Ti:sapphire laser system

Astra Gemini is a dual-beam petawatt Ti:sapphire laser at the Rutherford Appleton Laboratory in the U.K. We report measurements characterising the laser beam quality, pulse energy, and pulse duration of the first beam line.

The 10 PW OPCPA Vulcan laser upgrade

We present the progress that has been made in developing 10PW capability for the Vulcan laser. These pulses will have focused intensities ≫1023 Wcm−2, which represents orders of magnitude increases in intensity currently available. This will be achieved by generating pulses with energies greater than 300J and with durations less than 30fs using the technique of optical parametric chirped pulse amplification, OPCPA [1].

Central Laser Facility High Power Laser Capabilities Applied to X-Ray Laser Science

Soft X-ray lasers have been developed at the Central Laser Facility (CLF) of the Science and Technology Facilities Council over the last three decades by an active UK and international research community. The Vulcan Nd:glass Laser has been the primary drive system for these developments, providing pump pulses from nano- to pico- seconds, firing one shot every 20 minutes. An upgraded Vulcan facility is due to come on line in September 2008 with dual pico-second high energy beam lines (1 ps, 100 J and 10 ps, 500 J) combined with long pulse (80 ps, 40 J — 4 ns, 300 J) capability. Recent developments in laser technology have meant that the CLF has increased its ultra short pulse capabilities. The Ti:Sapphire Astra-Gemini laser facility, which came on-line in early 2008, gives 20 second shot turnaround times and ultra short pulses (30fs, 15J). The new opportunities which these drive systems enable for soft x-ray laser science, source development and applications will be presented.

Vulcan; a petawatt laser facility for 10/sup 21/ W cm/sup -2/ experiments

Summary form only. We report on the 3 year development programme to establish a Petawatt beamline on the Vulcan Nd:glass laser capable of delivering target intensity in the 10/sup 21/ W cm/sup -2/ regime by mid 2002. We describe the optical layout and mechanical design of the new target area, dedicated to short pulse interaction experiments, which is required to house the 15 m long vacuum compressor and target chamber.

Focused intensities of 1020 Wcm-2 with the upgraded Vulcan CPA interaction facility

There has been considerable interest in the last 10 years in the physics of ultra-high power laser interactions. With all high power lasers such as Vulcan there is a limit to the energy that can be extracted from laser amplifiers at short pulse-lengths due to the intensity dependent non-linear refractive index. The technique of Chirped Pulse Amplification has overcome the classic limit and has resulted in massive increases in focused intensity. The large increase in on target intensity is achieved by a substantial, usually orders of magnitude, reduction in pulse duration while at the same time maintaining comparable pulse energy and focusability.