I deeply regret stepping down from the position as Editor-in-Chief of Laser and Particle Beams (LPB), but this has become necessary as my other professional responsibilities have changed. Fortunately, Dieter Hoffmann is an ideal replacement who will provide the leadership needed to maintain the quality and continue the growth of LPB. I am confident that, under his direction, the journal will continue to serve the scientific community as a leading vehicle to exchange and archive forefront research results.The success of LPB to this point has been due to the work and contributions of many people. I learned much from Heinz Hora, the founding editor of LPB, during the 4 year overlap period when I served as Managing Editor. He continued to provide much help and advice after I took over in 1992. The Associate Editors and the Editorial Board have also played an instrumental role in the Journal's operations, ranging from advice about editorial policies to helping with special issues and with Guest Editors. The many authors who have submitted such outstanding manuscripts over the years are, of course, the fundamental reason the journal is so well received in the community. The various reviewers who have given so much time to their work have been integral to maintaining the journal quality. Last, but not least, thanks goes to the Cambridge University Press staff who have so ably handled the proofing, printing and circulation of the Journal.

Z pinches have a long and varied history. Beginning in the 18th century, z pinches have been used to heat plasmas very efficiently. Early in the nuclear fusion program, it was realized that modest currents are required to confine plasma that could produce energy gain. The instability of the confined plasma was convincingly demonstrated in experiments in the 1950s that were performed around the world. These uniformly negative results led to z pinches being dropped as a fusion concept. Recent progress in fast z pinches has reinvigorated the field. We review the field and highlight the recent advances that point the way to a bright future for z pinches.

The magneto-Rayleigh–Taylor (MRT) instability limits the performance of dynamic z pinches. This instability develops at the plasma-vacuum/field interface, growing in amplitude throughout the implosion, thereby reducing the peak plasma velocity and spatial uniformity at stagnation. MRT instabilities are believed to play a dominant role in the case of high wire number arrays, gas puffs and foils. In this article, the MRT instability is discussed in terms of initial seeding, linear and nonlinear growth, experimental evidence, radiation magnetohydrodynamic simulations, and mitigating schemes. A number of experimental results are presented, where the mitigating schemes have been realized. In general, the problem is inherently three dimensional, but two-dimensional simulations together with theory and experiment enhance our physical understanding and provide insight into future load design.

Characteristics of annular wire array z pinches as a function of wire number and at high wire number are reviewed. The data, taken primarily using aluminum wires on Saturn, are comprehensive. The experiments have provided important insights into the features of wire-array dynamics critical for high X-ray power generation, and have initiated a renaissance in z pinches when high numbers of wires are used. In this regime, for example, radiation environments characteristic of those encountered during the early pulses required for indirect-drive ICF ignition on the NIF have been produced in hohlraums driven by X rays from a z pinch, and are commented on here.

Pulsed-power-driven z-pinch plasmas are an intense source of soft X-ray radiation producing, on the Z facility, about 2 MJ of total radiation for a number of tungsten loads and in the case of a multiwire titanium array over 1 MJ total radiation and about 100 kJ from the titanium K-shell. The production and transport of radiation in these non-LTE plasmas are often modeled assuming some variation of Local Thermodynamic Equilibrium (LTE) in conjunction with radiation diffusion. Since these plasmas are neither in LTE or entirely opaque or transparent these models do not properly predict the emitted radiation spectra and yield. Also, application of these models overestimates the radiation cooling to the extent that the evolving hydrodynamic profiles are significantly different from those that would obtain using the appropriate non-LTE model with a more realistic treatment of the radiation transport. In this investigation, we discuss the production and transport of radiation from the viewpoint of the microscopic collisional and radiative processes and then apply it to z-pinch plasmas. Through the use of examples and illustrations, it is shown that for identical initial load conditions, atomic level structure, and rate coefficients, the models predict different results that affect the dynamic evolution and hydrodynamic history of the plasma. As an example, the emission spectrum is generated using a 1-D radiation MHD model self-consistently coupled to a circuit representing the Sandia Z facility. A comparison is then made between several standard models of ionization dynamics for a multiwire titanium array. Finally, we address some of the issues regarding how the dense plasma environment influences isolated atom structure and processes. These include, for example, atomic level shifts, ionization lowering, collision cross sections, and collision widths. Transition from the isolated-atom to the dressed-particle picture can modify the ionization physics and emission spectra to such an extent that it may challenge our precepts on how best to design loads for the next generation machine.

High-sensitivity interferometry measurements of initial density distributions are reviewed for a wide range of gas-puff nozzles used in plasma radiation source (PRS) z-pinch experiments. Accurate gas distributions are required for determining experimental load parameters, modeling implosion dynamics, understanding the radiation properties of the stagnated pinch, and for predicting PRS performance in future experiments. For a number of these nozzles, a simple ballistic-gas-flow model (BFM) has been used to provide good physics-based analytic fits to the measured r, z density distributions. These BFM fits provide a convenient means to smoothly interpolate radial density distributions between discrete axial measurement locations for finer-zoned two-dimensional MHD calculations, and can be used to determine how changes in nozzle parameters and load geometry might alter implosion dynamics and radiation performance. These measurement and analysis techniques are demonstrated for a nested-shell nozzle used in Double Eagle and Saturn experiments. For this nozzle, the analysis suggests load modifications that may increase the K-shell yield.

High-amplitude plasma wake waves are excited by high-density relativistic electron bunches (REB) moving in a plasma. The wake-fields can be used to accelerate charged particles, to serve as electrostatic wigglers in plasma free-electron lasers (FEL), and also can find many other applications. The electromagnetic fields in the region occupied by the bunch control the dynamics of the bunch itself. This paper presents the results of 2.5-dimensional numerical simulation of the modulation of a long REB in a plasma, the excitation of wake-fields by bunches in a plasma, in particular, in magnetoactive plasma. The previous one-dimensional study has shown that the density-profile modulation of a long bunch moving in plasma results in the growth of the coherent wake-wave amplitude. The bunch modulation occurs at the plasma frequency. The present study is concerned with the REB motion, taking into account the plasma and REB nonlinearities. It is demonstrated that the nonlinear REB/plasma dynamics exerts primary effect on both the REB self-modulation and the wake-field excitation by the bunches formed. We have demonstrated that a multiple excess of the accelerated bunch energy εmax over the energy of the exciting REB is possible in a magnetoactive plasma for a certain relationship between the parameters of the “plasma–bunch–magnetic field” system (owing to a hybrid volume–surface character of REB-excited wake-fields).

The energy-momentum conservation law is used to investigate the interaction of pulses in the framework of nonlinear electrodynamics with Lorentz-invariant constitutive relations. It is shown that for the pulses of the arbitrary shape, the interaction results in phase shift only.

Two of the key issues of a krypton fluoride (KrF) laser driver for inertial fusion energy are the development of long life, high transparency pressure foils (to isolate vacuum in the electron beam diode from a working gas in the laser chamber), and the development of durable, stable, optical windows. Both of these problems have been studied on the single-pulse e-beam-pumped KrF laser installation GARPUN. We have measured the transport of electron beams (300 keV, 50 kA, 100 ns, 10 × 100 cm) through aluminum-beryllium and titanium foils and compared them with Monte Carlo numerical calculations. It was shown that 50-μm thickness Al-Be and 20-μm Ti foils had equal transmittance. However, in contrast to Ti foil, whose surface was strongly etched by fluorine, no surface modification nor fatal damages were observed for Al-Be foils after ∼1000 laser shots and protracted fluorine exposure. We also measured the 8% reduction in the transmission of CaF2 windows under irradiation by scattered electrons when they were set at 8.5 cm apart from the e-beam-pumped region. However an applied magnetic field of ∼0.1 T significantly reduced electron scattering both across and along the laser cell at typical pumping conditions with 1.5 atm pressure working gas. Thus the e-beam-induced absorption of laser radiation in optical windows might be fully eliminated in an e-beam-pumping scheme with magnetic field guiding.

Flyer acceleration experiments are carried out using a KrF laser system with a pulse duration of 10–15 ns and an intensity of ∼1.0 × 1013 W/cm2. Three-layered targets (aluminum–polyimide–tantalum) are used. First, an average velocity of laser-driven tantalum flyers with a thickness of 4 and 8 μm is estimated. Then, in a collision of a flyer with a copper layer attached to a diamond plate, we measure a transit time of a shock wave in the diamond. The impact velocity is estimated based on the transit time and a numerical simulation. This numerical simulation also shows that the initial peak pressure caused by the impact of a 4-μm-thick flyer is kept at 11 Mbar for 12–13 μm in thickness. Finally, whether this thickness is enough for EOS measurements is discussed.

This paper deals with the realization of a CA model of the physical interactions occurring when high-power laser pulses are focused on plasma targets. The low-level and microscopic physical laws of interactions among the plasma and the photons in the pulse are described. In particular, electron–electron interaction via the Coulomb force and photon–electron interaction due to ponderomotive forces are considered. Moreover, the dependence on time and space of the index of refraction is taken into account, as a consequence of electron motion in the plasma. Ions are considered as a fixed background. Simulations of these interactions are provided in different conditions and the macroscopic dynamics of the system, in agreement with the experimental behavior, are evidenced.

The X-ray emission from hollow atoms produced by collisions of multiply charged ions accelerated by a short pulse laser with a solid or foil is studied theoretically. The possibility of obtaining a high conversion efficiency X-ray source in an ultrafast atomic process (∼1 fs) is demonstrated using the multistep-capture-and-loss (MSCL) model. Such an X-ray source has a clear advantage for the spectral range around a few kiloelectron volts over the conventional Kα X-ray source. Namely, the number of X-ray photons increases as the laser energy becomes larger and could reach 3 × 1011 photons for a laser energy of about 10 J.

The production of highly charged ions in a CO2 laser-generated plasma is compared for different laser pulse-time structures. The work was performed at the CERN Laser Ion Source, which has the aim of developing a high current, high charge-state ion source for the Large Hadron Collider (LHC). When an intense laser pulse is focused onto a high-Z metal target, the ions expanding in the plasma plume are suitable for extraction from the plasma and matching into a synchrotron. For the first time, a comparison is made between free-running pulses with randomly fluctuating intensity, and mode-locked pulse trains with a reproducible structure and the same energy. Despite the lower power density with respect to the mode-locked pulse train, the free-running pulse provides higher charge states and higher yield.

A theoretical model for a multicascade liner system is proposed with a view to reduce the growth rate of Rayleigh-Taylor (R-T) instability and to calculate the fusion parameters of a dense θ-pinch plasma. The dynamics of such plasma has been described using the modified snow-plow model for sinusoidal and t1/3 types of discharge current profiles. Numerical results demonstrate that the thermonuclear fusion parameters can be achieved for a dense θ-pinch deuterium-tritium (D-T) fiber plasma for an optimum choice of shell thickness. The relevance of this kind of study is possible use of gas-liner and staged pinches as an alternative source of thermonuclear fusion.