UNITED KINGDOM - RAL

CLRC CENTRAL LASER FACILITY
RUTHERFORD APPLETON LABORATORY

Chilton, Didcot, Oxfordshire OX11 0QX

Telephone: +44 1235 445582
Telefax: +44 1235 445888
E-mail: h.hutchinson@rl.ac.uk
URL:   http://www.clf.rl.ac.uk

CENTRAL LASER FACILITY

Director:	Hutchinson, Henry (Prof., h.hutchinson@rl.ac.uk )
Associate Director:	Edwards, Chris (c.b.edwards@rl.ac.uk )

Finance and Administration

Brown, Alison
Elliot, Maggie

Horton, Katharine

Tubb, Ruth

Vulcan

Danson, Colin (Group Leader)
Collier, John
Hawkes, Steve

Hernandez-Gomez, Cristina
Kidd, Andy
Pepler, Dave

Winstone, Trevor

Target Area Group

Neely, David (Group Leader)
Clarke, Rob

Foster, Peta
Heathcote, Robert

Notley, Margaret
Ziener, Christian

Physics

Norreys, Peter (Group Leader)

Habara, Hideaki

Lancaster, Kate

Lasers for Science Facility

Parker, Tony (Group Leader)
Botchway, Stan
Clark, Ian

Hirst, Graeme
Matousek, Pavel
Shaikh, Waseem

Tavender, Sue
Towrie, Mike
Ward, Andy

Astra

Hutchinson, Henry (Group Leader)

Divall, Edwin

Langley, Andrew

Laser Research and Development

Ross, Ian (Group Leader)

Hooker, Chris

Engineering and Technology

Wyborn, Brian (Group Leader)
Hatton, Peter

Reason, Chris
Rodkiss, Dave

Wyatt, Ray

Research activities:
The Central Laser Facility is one of the world's largest centres for high power laser research. Two large laser installations, Vulcan and Astra, provide ultra-high power laser radiation to target for use in fundamental and applied research. The Lasers for Science Facility comprises a suite of 'state-of-the-art' table top lasers, providing a wide range of tunability and pulse widths, to a diverse community of users.

Vulcan is a world leading, ultrahigh power Nd:glass laser providing versatile, multi-beam interaction facilities, using a number of different geometries. Chirped Pulse Amplification (CPA) gives access to the ultra-high intensity regime with irradiance on target up to 10²⁰ W.cm^-2, at powers up to 100 TW in a subpicosecond pulse. In addition to the short pulse beamline, Vulcan provides a total of 2 kJ at 1 μm in six beams, with additional synchronised beams for probing, diagnostics and X-ray backlighting.

Astra is a Titanium-Sapphire laser allowing the generation of pulses as short as 50 fs at 800 nm. The facility operates with two target areas: one which is designed for the investigation of ionisation and dissociation of molecules and the other, operating at higher energies (0.5J) uses CPA to generate intensities to target of 10¹⁹ W.cm^-2.

The high power lasers are used for a wide range of research in plasma physics, high intensity interaction phenomena, the production and application of intense pulsed X-ray sources and X-ray lasers. A significant fraction of the plasma physics research consists of basic studies related to ICF.

The Lasers for Science Facility operates versatile laser systems for scientific research across a wide range of disciplines. A laser-plasma X-ray source provides 1 W of soft X-ray radiation at 1 nm wavelength at 100 Hz for semiconductor X-ray lithography and radiation biology. The PIRATE, Picosecond Infrared Absorption and Transient Excitation, facility uses time-resolved infrared spectroscopy to study changes in structures in molecules on picosecond time scales. The Laser Microscopy Laboratory uses a femtosecond laser with a confocal microscope (120 ps, 3D imaging system) for time resolved confocal microscopy, optical tweezers, single photon counting, multiphoton processes. A novel dual-OPO system provides independently tuneable, synchronised pulses of 100 fs to 1 ps duration in the 480-730 nm spectral range at 1 kHz. Mixing of the two outputs gives continuously tuneable output between 220 nm and 2,200 nm with single pulse energy in excess of 0.5μJ. The nanosecond laboratory uses time resolved resonance Raman spectroscopy, flash photolysis and singlet oxygen detection for chemical studies.

The laser systems are available not only to UK scientists but also to European scientists in the CEC scheme for access to Large Scale Facilities. There are a large number of informal collaborations where UK and EU user teams carry out joint experiments with colleagues from other international laboratories.