LASERLAB users meet in Szeged, Hungary

Some 20 users of the LASERLAB-EUROPE facilities met with the User Representatives and Access Board (AB) members at the 2012 User Meeting. The title of the meeting was “From quantum electronics towards medicine and particle physics” and it was hosted by the Departments of Physics, University of Szeged, Hungary (USZ) in the Building of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences on 16-17th February, 2012.

The meeting was opened by Sándor Szatmári, head of the Department of Experimental Physics (DEP), and the participants were welcomed by Gábor Szabó, the Rector of USZ. Gábor Szabó gave a short introduction on the history and importance of the University of Szeged. During the two days conference, a presentation was given by Károly Osvay on the status of the “Extreme Light Infrastructure (ELI)” European project, especially focusing on Szeged, which is going to be the attosecond pillar of the ELI, the ELI-ALPS.

The following scientific talks from users gave insight in a wide range of advanced studies and applications.

The 1st session titled ‘Hot dense plasma diagnosis and emission characteristics’ was chaired by István Földes (Wigner Research Centre of the HAS Institute for Particle and Nuclear Physics, Budapest, Hungary). One of the most interesting presentations was given by Ingo Uschmann (Jena University, Germany) on the diagnostics of hot dense plasmas by advanced x-ray spectroscopy.

The 2nd session was devoted to ‘Advanced plasma applications’, chaired by Oldrich Renner (Institute of Physics, Academy of Sciences CR, Prague, Czech Republic). The keynote lecturer, Valer Tosa (National Institute for R&D Isotopic and Molecular Technolgies, Cluj-Napoca, Romania) gave a talk on gating of high-order harmonics emission by incommensurate two-color mid-IR laser pulses. Furthermore, in this session Dusan Chorvat, International Laser Centre, Bratislava, Slovakia summarized the user training activities of LASERLAB-EUROPE.

The 3rd session titled ‘Particles and radiative sources’ was chaired by Károly Osvay (University of Szeged, Hungary). Jinchuan Ju (Université Paris-Sud 11, France) provided an overview of electron beam and x-ray radiation generated by laser wake field in dielectric capillary tubes.

The traditional round-table discussion titled ‘Towards LASERLAB III’, chaired by Jouko Korppi-Tommola (University of Jyväskylä, Finnland), closed the two-day meeting. In order to increase the attendance of users at user meetings, it was considered that an annual meeting is needed to follow the advancement of science funded under the LASERLAB program and to provide a discussion forum among new users and user representatives. Laboratories should convince their ‘best users’ to present their results at these meetings. At the end of LASERLAB II, activities of the research community using low-intensity ultrafast pulses was clearly on the rise, predicting a growing need for LASERLAB III services.

LASERLAB-EUROPE's Access Board members also held a meeting in Szeged, discussing the current status of the ‘dynamic access’ policy with regard to the soft transition from LASERLAB II to LASERLAB III.

The two-day meeting finished with a visit of the laser laboratories of the University of Szeged. USZ hosts two high-power laser systems (HILL at 248 nm and TEWATI at 800 nm), which are the only high intensity laser systems in Hungary. Special about the event was that reconstruction of the main building of the Physics Institute – hosting both laboratories – was just finished by the time of the User Meeting. So the guests could see both laboratories in their final condition.

Participants enjoyed a gala dinner in a traditional Hungarian restaurant; this successful social event provided a great occasion for the members to discuss their research and exchange ideas in an informal way.

We were delighted to have the opportunity to organize the 2012 User Meeting!

Sándor Szatmári

The book of abstracts and a photo gallery can be found here.