Preface
This year, 2020, is the 60th anniversary of the birth of the laser. When the laser was
invented by Maiman in 1960, the news spread as a shocking technology of the
future. Soon after, the laser was used in a scene from the film “Goldfinger” in the
“007 series” in 1964, and this film made people worldwide realize how powerful the
laser is. Soon after, Maiman’s small laser had scaled up the purpose of fusion energy
after the publication of laser fusion concept in 1972. I was very much interesetd in
reseraching fusion energy when I was a student at Osaka University and when the oil
crisis of 1973 had crippled the global economy.
Along with research of the laser fusion as graduate student and young faculty
member, I faced numerous challenges in integrated physical phenomena to research
on laser fusion and analyze experimental data from many angles with large-scale
lasers. Such intergrated physics is the coupled phenomenon of compressible fluid,
radiation, dense matter state, atomic physics, kinetic physics, and so on in mm scale
fusion target materials. These physical phenomena are also key to research in
astrophysics, and there are several connections in the non-dimensional scale of
time and space.
Toward the end of the 1980s, chirped pulse amplification (CPA) technique made
it possible to increase the laser intensity more than 10
4 times in the intense lasers
used for laser fusion and related plasma physics. The electron motion in such an
ultra-intense laser is highly relativistic and the Lorentz factor becomes roughly γ ¼
10
4 . These new lasers have opened the window for relativistic plasma physics and
quantum electrodynamics in a small-scale laboratory.
In the last 60 years since Maiman’s invention, the physics of laser plasma has
grown into a mature science and a challenging subject with the help of precise
diagnostics with ultra-short and small-scale resolutions. Honestly speaking,
however, greater effort is required to understand the physics in real experiments
and to control the laser plasma for many applications from fundamental to
industrial ones.
The author has worked for laser plasma and related physics for 40 years as a
computational theorist. I was fortunate because my institute in Osaka is a place
where the majority of research is experimental in nature, and big laser Gekko-XII for
vii
This year, 2020, is the 60th anniversary of the birth of the laser. When the laser was
invented by Maiman in 1960, the news spread as a shocking technology of the
future. Soon after, the laser was used in a scene from the film “Goldfinger” in the
“007 series” in 1964, and this film made people worldwide realize how powerful the
laser is. Soon after, Maiman’s small laser had scaled up the purpose of fusion energy
after the publication of laser fusion concept in 1972. I was very much interesetd in
reseraching fusion energy when I was a student at Osaka University and when the oil
crisis of 1973 had crippled the global economy.
Along with research of the laser fusion as graduate student and young faculty
member, I faced numerous challenges in integrated physical phenomena to research
on laser fusion and analyze experimental data from many angles with large-scale
lasers. Such intergrated physics is the coupled phenomenon of compressible fluid,
radiation, dense matter state, atomic physics, kinetic physics, and so on in mm scale
fusion target materials. These physical phenomena are also key to research in
astrophysics, and there are several connections in the non-dimensional scale of
time and space.
Toward the end of the 1980s, chirped pulse amplification (CPA) technique made
it possible to increase the laser intensity more than 10
4 times in the intense lasers
used for laser fusion and related plasma physics. The electron motion in such an
ultra-intense laser is highly relativistic and the Lorentz factor becomes roughly γ ¼
10
4 . These new lasers have opened the window for relativistic plasma physics and
quantum electrodynamics in a small-scale laboratory.
In the last 60 years since Maiman’s invention, the physics of laser plasma has
grown into a mature science and a challenging subject with the help of precise
diagnostics with ultra-short and small-scale resolutions. Honestly speaking,
however, greater effort is required to understand the physics in real experiments
and to control the laser plasma for many applications from fundamental to
industrial ones.
The author has worked for laser plasma and related physics for 40 years as a
computational theorist. I was fortunate because my institute in Osaka is a place
where the majority of research is experimental in nature, and big laser Gekko-XII for
vii