The HED@FAIR collaboration welcomes the HED physics community to a two-day workshop on laser fusion research opportunities at FAIR on June 20th and 21st, 2024, at GSI Darmstadt’s main auditorium.
With the recent milestone achieved at the National Ignition Facility in the USA in inertial confinement fusion, the German government has changed its position significantly on laser-driven fusion and now fully endorses research on this subject. The HED@FAIR collaboration has expressed interest in adding laser fusion research to its research portfolio because of the many synergies between the planned activities of the collaboration at FAIR and the individual scientific interests of the collaboration partners.
The current proposal is to speed up the installation of a multi-kilojoule multi-beam laser facility on the FAIR campus in connection with the APPA cave to support, among others, laser fusion research until the compression facility becomes available. Importantly, this facility, which could be built in collaboration with the start-up company Focused Energy GmbH, will be open to academic access on a proposal-merit basis. This ensures that the HED physics community has a fair and equal opportunity to contribute to and benefit from this research.
Topics for the workshop are to help define the facility’s scientific requirements for:
- Laser-plasma instability studies
- Hydrodynamic instabilities and compression studies in planar geometry
- Code development and benchmarking needs
- Fast ignition
- X-ray diagnostics
- Material studies: foam, EOS
The workshop will be coupled with a visit of the FAIR facility.
Workshop organizers: V. Bagnoud, M. Roth, P. Neumayer, K. Schoenberg, D. Kraus
