Laboratoire pour l'Utilisation des Lasers Intenses, Palaiseau, France

Access to the LULI100TW and LULI2000 Laser facilities.

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Contact: Sylvie Jacquemot Email

LULI is the major French research centre for the study and the use of high energy and high power pulsed lasers in nanosecond to picosecond regimes. It operates and continuously upgrades two multi-beam facilities: LULI200 and the 100TW, both having a dedicated experimental area fully-equipped with state-of-the -art instrumentation, such as spectrographs, interferometers, visible to x-ray detectors. Experiments that are conducted are mainly based on the irradiation of tiny solid or gaseous targets by the visible laser light - from 1.06 to 0.35µm - or by secondary radiation or particle sources. The illuminated media are then brought to the exotic plasma state, at extreme temperature, density and pressure conditions.

>>> access projects performed by LULI users

Activities :

• study of the physical mechanisms involved in directly-driven inertial confinement fusion or fast ignition, such as laser-plasma interaction, hydrodynamics (equations of states, electron transport, ...), atomic physics of hot and/or dense plasmas, ...
• laboratory astrophysics (radiative shocks, plasma jets, ...) or geophysics
• material processing using laser-induced shocks
• test of innovative concepts of laser-driven secondary radiation (either coherent - x-ray lasers - or incoherent) or relativistic particle sources
• design and operation of advanced plasma diagnostics (FDI, x-ray Thomson scattering, proton deflectometry, point projection x-ray absorption spectroscopy ...)
• research and developments in optics and laser technologies (adaptive optics, damage threshold of large optics, tiling of compression gratings, OPCPA, diode-pumped solid-state high energy laser technology, ...)

Research opportunities within the Laserlab access activity:

• LULI2000 is one of the most energetic laser facilities in Europe: it's a flexible high-power 2-beam single pulse neodymium glass laser, delivering up to 2kJ at 1.06µm in 1.5ns square pulses. Pulse duration, wavelength, beam delay and angle can be readily adjusted. Two additional moderately energetic (100J) beams will be added next year to increase the laser-based diagnostic capabilties. The implementation of a chirped pulsed pre-amplifier and of a compressor stage will allow reaching a peak power at the PW level on one beam mid-2007. This will lead to a unique combination of ns and ps high-energy pulses and open the route to exciting physics.

• The 100TW facility is a highly versatile, reliable and manageable Ti:Sa/mixed glass laser system based on the CPA technique. The main ultra-intense vacuum-compressed beam, reaching up to 30J in typically 0.3ps at w, is optically synchronized with a 50J ~½ns uncompressed chirped pulse and with an auxiliary 30TW (10J/0.3ps) air-compressed beam. A 100mJ short (0.3ps) visible backlighter is also available.