Centre d'Etudes Scientifiques et Techniques d'Aquitaine, CEA, Le Barp, France

Access to the ALISE high power laser facility.

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Contact: Alain Boscheron Email

Access to the facility for international research team are offered each year through LASERLAB and CEA laser facility opening program managed by ILP .

The ALISÉ facility is a high-power Nd:glass laser chain in operation at CEA-CESTA near Bordeaux, France. It is first devoted to laser science & technology for supporting Laser Megajoule and PETAL.
In addition a dedicated experimental room allows laser interaction experiments in a target chamber under vacuum. Nanosecond pulses up to 150 joules at 1053 nm can be delivered every hour on target, and frequency conversion and probe beam allow a flexible setup for each experiment. Ultra-high intensity of the order of 50 TW ( 30 J&650 fs) is also obtained with a compression stage with gold gratings under vacuum.

>>> access projects performed by CESTA users

Activities:
Scientific and technical expertise in laser physics:
* Nanosecond laser sources with temporal and spatial shapping,
* Short pulses laser sources (CPA and OPCPA techniques)
* Amplification (cavity)
* Focal spot smoothing techniques
* Damage threshold physics in nanosecond and femtosecond regime
* Non-linear mechanisms (n2 compensation, Raman/Brillouin scattering...)
* Frequency conversion for high power laser (doubling, tripling)
* Validation of laser simulation code (Miro code, n2, gain, wavefront ...),
* Adaptive optic for wavefront correction
* New materials and architecture for high power laser

Research opportunities within the Laserlab access activity:

- Characterisation of the sliding o a plastic foil irradiated by a laser in a gold chanel in condition relevant to the fast ignitor concept
- Characterisation of the dynamic behaviour of nanostructured materials under laser shock
Optical laser smoothing by under dense plasmas
-Production and characterisation of XMev source by ultra high laser pulse
- Kilometer range atmospheric propagation of ultra intense laser pulse
- Coating deposition using laser induced spallation
- XUV emission of warm Xenon gas and XUV reflective power of the cell walls
- Measurement of propagation, acceleration and stability of shock waves in a density gradient
Measurement of velocity distribution of hot electron by X ray line polarization spectroscopy