What kind of nuclear physics experiments with high power lasers?

High power lasers with nanosecond scale pulses are unique tools for producing extreme plasmas characterized by high degrees of ionization and high temperatures (several hundreds of eV) where huge electric and magnetic fields (several billion V/m and several hundred Teslas) are present. They are perfect tools to perform astrophysics experiments in a laboratory, in particular those involving nuclear isomers. These isomers may have a different behavior when placed in a plasma compared to a solid. I will present an experiment on the 84Rb nucleus that can be done at GSI, using both the UNILAC and PHELIX facilities. In addition, in the last fifteen years considerable progress has been made in the field of laser-accelerated particles (electrons, ions, photons, neutrons). The particle bunches accelerated with lasers feature very high intensities (some 1012 particles), compactness (some 10 μm at the source) and brevity (a few ns). The energy distributions of these bunches are continuous and can reach a few tens of MeV for protons or even some GeV for the electrons and associated bremsstrahlung photons, which is largely enough to induce nuclear reactions in matter. It would be therefore possible to design the 84Rb experiment as a full laser-based experiment, opening the way for a new kind of nuclear physics experiments involving nuclear reactions on already excited nuclei. This evolution will be made possible thanks to the new generation of high-repetition lasers; however, numerous issues must be addressed before.