Central Laser Facility, CCLRC Rutherford Appleton Laboratory, Chilton, United Kingdom

Access to the VULCAN, ASTRA, and Lasers for Science facilities.

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Vulcan is one of the worlds leading high power laser facilities offering UK and European researchers a unique facility for ultra-high intensity laser interactions with solids, gases and plasmas. Capabilities include a Petawatt beamline and the ability to host a combination of 100TW short pulses synchronised with 2.6kJ multi-beam nanosecond pulses. These offer researchers the opportunity to perform experiments with novel geometries and pulse options.
Contact: David Neely Email

Astra Target Area 1 provides 10fs pulses for ultrafast time resolved experiments at 1kHz or 10Hz. Astra Target Area 2 is a short pulse (40 fs) high intensity (up to 1019 Wcm-2), high repetition rate (10 Hz) Ti:Sapphire based system.
Contact: A.D.Ward Email

>>> access projects performed by CLF users

Activities:
Providing access to advanced laser systems for inter- and cross-disciplinary research in physics, chemistry and biology. Areas of study include laser acceleration of electrons and protons, X-ray and proton tomography, fusion studies,
laser-induced nuclear reactions, multiphoton atomic and molecular physics, time-resolved Raman spectroscopy, time-resolved microscopy and protein folding dynamics.

Research opportunities within the Laserlab access activity:

• High power , high energy Vulcan laser and target systems
• High intensitiy, high repetition rate Astra laser
• Frequency tunable IR picosecond laser systems
• Multiphoton microscopy