Abstract
Ultra-intense lasers have demonstrated the capability of accelerating short pulses of intense ion beams.
These ion beams have been used to generate short bursts of neutrons by irradiating a converter in close
distance to the source, making this scheme a very compact and bright source of neutrons up to more than
100 MeV in energy. Using novel laser ion acceleration mechanisms directed beams of neutrons can be
generated, which increases the brightness of these sources compared to previous attempts. We review
the recent research and present experimental data using a mechanism based on relativistic transparency
to drive the most intense laser driven neutron source and use them for first applications.
