2021 Volume 49 Issue 3 Pages 155-
We demonstrate the fast isochoric heating of an imploded dense plasma using a multi-picosecond kJclass petawatt laser at the GEKKO-LFEX laser facility at the Institute of Laser Engineering, Osaka University. We experimentally achieved 2.2 petapascal pressure of an ultra-high-energy-density state with 4.6 kJ of total laser energy that is one order of magnitude lower than the energy used in the conventional implosion scheme. These findings clarified that the scheme is an efficient way to create the petapascal pressure state, which is a unique testbed for fast ignition schemes. In this paper, we describe the heating mechanism of fast isochoric heating and X-ray measurements using doped targets that can characterize plasmas above the keV temperature and solid density.
