High-intensity Lasers in Nuclear Science

Recent developments in high intensity lasers open up a new approach to investigating nuclear reactions in the laboratory without access to nuclear reactors or particle accelerators. By focusing the laser spot, very high laser intensities in excess of 10 W cm can now be produced. Under these conditions, matter in the focal spot is turned into hot dense relativistic plasma. The laser interactions with solid or gas targets can generate collimated beams of highly energetic electrons and ions. The possibility of accelerating electrons to energies over 200 MeV in such experiments led to the utilization of high-energy bremsstrahlung radiation in order to investigate laser-induced gamma reactions. Laser-induced activation, transmutation, fission and fusion have been demonstrated with both single pulse giant laser systems and laboratory tabletop laser systems.