Access Facilities - PALS

Access to the PALS kJ Iodine Laser facility. >>> PALS Homepage

 
Contact: Jiri Ullschmied Email

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The principal experimental resource at PALS is the high-power iodine laser system Asterix IV. This instrument was developed at the Max Planck Institute for Quantum Optics in Garching, Germany, and with the latest upgrade in 1991 it provided irradiation facility at the 1 kJ energy level until May 1997. It has been exploited by a wide international research community, within the European Large-Scale Facilities scheme. The facility has been serving its users since September 2000. It is exploited for research of interaction with matter of focused high-power laser beams of a power density of 10^14-10^16 W/cm2 and for studies of hot laser-produced plasmas. Main effort is aimed at various applications in science and technology of the hot laser plasma products, such as radiation and charged particles. The main lines of research of the laboratory are the following:

• development and application of plasma-based point sources of non-coherent soft x-rays
• development and application of plasma-based soft x-ray lasers
• development and application laser plasma sources of highly-charged high-energy ions
• study of matter in conditions of extreme pressures and temperatures, with respect to the needs of material sciences, laboratory astrophysics, thermonuclear research and other scientific fields.

Providing access to a unique high-power laser system for experiments on interaction of laser radiation with matter. Areas of study include a number of cross-disciplinary areas in physics, astrophysics, chemistry, biology, and material science, such as:

• Laser based XUV sources and their applications in science and technology.
• Development and applications of high-power XUV lasers.
• Development and applications of laser sources of highly charged ions.
• High resolution XUV spectroscopy of laser-produced plasma.
• Investigation of laser-produced plasma dynamics and laser imprint smoothing.
• Investigation of laser induced shock waves.

• Fundamental wavelength 1315 nm, conversion up to the 4th harmonics. Repetition rate 5 shots/hour.
• Several parallel auxiliary and diagnostic beamlines.
• Both point and linear focus arrangement.
• Power density in the point focus up to 3.10^16 W/cm2.
• Flexible twin target chamber with a number of diagnostic ports.
• Complete set of up-to-date laser and plasma diagnostics, including streak cameras, 3-frame laser interferometer/shadowgraph, XUV spectroscopes, ion analysers etc.