Access Facilities - CESTA

Access to the ALISE high power laser facility >>> CESTA Homepage

>> access projects performed by CESTA users

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.

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