Present Status and Future Prospects of Laser Fusion Research at ILE Osaka University

Reviewed are the present status and future prospects of the laser fusion research at the ILE Osaka. The Gekko XII and Peta Watt laser system have been operated for investigating the implosion hydrodynamics, fast ignition, and the relativistic laser plasma interactions and so on. In particular, the fast ignition experiments with cone shell target have been in progress as the UK and US-Japan collaboration programs. In the experiments, the imploded high density plasmas are heated by irradiating 500 J level peta-watt laser pulse. The thermal neutron yield is found to increase by three orders of magnitude by injecting the peta-watt laser into the cone shell target. The Rayleigh-Taylor instability experiment results are also reviewed is this paper.