Enabling pulse compression and proton acceleration in a modular ICF driver for nuclear and particle physics applications

The existence of efficient ion acceleration regimes in collective laser-plasma interactions opens up the possibility to develop high-energy physics facilities in conjunction with projects for inertial confinement nuclear fusion (ICF) and neutron spallation sources. In this paper, we show that the pulse compression requests to make operative these acceleration mechanisms do not fall in contradiction with current designs for an ICF driver. In particular, we discuss explicitly a solution that exploits optical parametric chirped pulse amplification and the intrinsic modularity of ICF power plants.