Speaker
Description
The UK has been at the forefront of development in high power lasers since the 1970s , with the Central Laser Facility (CLF) at the Rutherford Appleton Laboratory providing world-class laser systems to national and international users. Since the early 2000s, Petawatt class systems such as the ND:glass VULCAN PW (500 fs, 500 J) and the Ti:SA ASTRA GEMINI laser (2 X15 J, 35 fs) have provided experimenters with world-leading capabilities, employed to achieve key milestones in high energy density science, particle acceleration, laboratory astrophysics, as well as in several applicative area.
The CLF is currently engaged in major upgrades of its high power laser provision: the new Extreme Photonics Application Centre (EPAC) currently being commissioned, will provide 10Hz PW beams to 2 target areas, one devoted to wakefield acceleration and applications (online from 2026), with the second one dedicated to secondary sources from interactions with solids and fundamental science. An upgrade of the VULCAN laser (which suspended operations in 2023) will deliver the VULCAN2020 facility (from 2029 onwards), where a 20PW short pulse laser (20fs, 400J) will be available together with 20KJ of ns pulses.
Beyond the CLF, significant facilities have also been developed in regional Universities across the UK: the Scottish Centre for the Application of Plasma-based Accelerators (SCAPA) facility at Strathclyde University (Glasgow) is based around a 350TW , 20 fs Ti:Sa system developed by Thales and provides beamlines to 3 experimental bunkers for the delivery of radiation beams for applicative use. At Queen’s University Belfast, the Nd:Glass TARANIS laser system provides 15J in longer, ~500 fs pulses, and a new 10 TW, high repetition rate facility (200 mJ, 20fs, 100 Hz) is currently being developed for the development of high rep-rate technology and applications of radiation beams.
The talk will provide a brief overview of the current status and plans for development of these systems.
