WG.7: International Committee on Ultrahigh Intensity Lasers (ICUIL)

ICUIL: Kick-off Meeting Minutes
February 7, 2004

The kickoff meeting of the International Union of Pure and Applied Physics' (IUPAP) International Committee on Ultrahigh Intensity Lasers (ICUIL) working group was held on February 7, 2004 at the Cosener's House, Abingdon, England. The following members attended:

C. Barty, USA	G. Mourou, USA
N. Dias Vieira Junior, Brasil	J. Schneider, Germany
R. Falcone, USA	W. Sandner, Germany
D. Hulin, France	A. Sen, India
H. Hutchinson, UK	T. Tajima, Japan
D-K. Ko, South Korea	K. Ueda, Japan
K. Ledingham, UK	C-G. Wahlstrom, Sweden
D. Mathur, India	J. Zhang, China
S. Michalowski, OECD France

Y. Kato from Japan also participated in the meeting as an invitee. R. Clark and J. Collier, both from Rutherford Appleton Laboratories, UK, also participated in part of the meeting as invitees. The chairperson, Gerard Mourou, welcomed members of ICUIL and invitees; C Barty agreed to take minutes of the meeting. The meeting followed the schedule shown below.

1. 8:30 am Introduction and Presentation of the Agenda G. Mourou

Administrative matters

2. 8:50 am Discussion ICUIL Secretary G. Mourou/D. Hulin
3. 9:10 am Presentation of the ICUIL web site and data base T. Tajima

Unity and Coherence

4. 10:20 am Asian Network on High Intensity Lasers Kato/Lee/Zhang/Mathur
5. 10:40 am LaserLab Europe W.Sandners
6. 11:00 am ALLS Canada G. Mourou
7. 11:20 am German net W. Sandners
8. 11:40 am SAUUL C. Barty/G. Mourou

Lunch/Executive Session

9. 1:00 pm Status of the Ultrahigh Intensity Conference C. Barty
10. 1:20 pm Workshop on Absolute Intensity Measurements W. Sandners

Topics of General Interest (presented by invited specialists)

11. 1:40 pm Radiological Protection R. Clark, UK
12. 2:20 pm Towards Extreme Power/Intensity:On the possibility of Exawatt Systems A. Migus, France
13. 2:50 pm Towards Extreme Power: The OPCPA Approach J. Collier, UK

Synergy with Other Fields

14. 3:20 pm Marriage between High Energy Accelerator and High Intensity Lasers T. Tajima
15. 4:00 pm Roadmap toward short wavelength FEL R. Falcone
16. 4:30 pm Wrap-up session
      5:00 pm Adjourn

1. G Mourou presented an historical overview of the formation of the ICUIL committee. He reviewed the charge and goals of the ICUIL as outlined to the IUPAP. The draft charter of ICUIL was discussed in detail and approved after incorporation of one change, namely, the addition of an ex-officio member from IUPAP (the representative from C16 of IUPAP).

2. There was considerable discussion on the need to have a secretary for ICUIL and the associated duties. It was generally agreed that the secretary should be the contact point for the ICUIL, should help prepare ICUIL meetings, and be in charge of trying to prevent the evaporation of information debated during the ICUIL meeting. It was also felt that as in the case of ICFA, the appointed secretary would be expected to continue the institutional memory of the working group. The selected person would need to have stature to be able to fulfill an ICFA-like secretary's position. It was noted that the person in the ICFA working group does not do all the administrative work of the group. The chairperson was of the opinion that a secretary should be appointed as soon as possible.

After extensive discussions, and consultations held over the lunch break, a proposal was made to have Deepak Mathur as the first secretary. There was unanimous consent for this proposal.

There was also a presentation made by D Hulin on the final report made to the Global Science Forum (GSF) of the OECD. It was noted that ICUIL is the second IUPAP working group to have developed from a GSF activity.

3. T Tajima reported on the ICUIL web page that is presently hosted in Japan by JAERI's APRC laboratory. There was extensive discussion on the type of website ICUIL ought to have and many concrete suggestions on content and style were relayed to T Tajima who agreed to summarize them in a single write-up.

It was felt that the ICUIL website ought to be the responsibility of the secretary. The web site should try to convey to researchers in the field that it is their web site; it should be designed so as to foster a sense of inclusion and community.

It was noted that 2005 has been declared as the Year of Physics and ICUIL should link with IUPAP to support any activity that would help highlight physics that can be carried out with ultra-intense lasers.

4-8. Y Kato reported on the Asian Network for High Intensity Laser Science (Asian Laser Network). This new network is informal and, unlike the European network, is not government funded. It was noted that this network is for "high" intensity work and not exclusively for "ultrahigh" intensity. In the course of discussion it was agreed that the ICUIL charter be modified to explicitly include a provision to support networks, such as the Asian network, that are related to the field. After extensive discussion and consultations over lunch, a marginal change in wording of the ICUIL charter was agreed so as to include direct reference to sponsorship and support of ICUIL-related regional networks. Approval by unanimous consent was given to the changes. Consequently, the Asian Intense Laser Network is henceforth considered an ICUIL-affiliated regional panel.
W Sandner reported on the European network, Laser Lab Europe. The European network program has evolved beyond only providing transnational access at a budget of 500k euros and is the first attempt at a joint European research policy although individual labs/resources continue to be funded primarily by the local country. The network represents 17 lasers infrastructures from 9 countries; their combined national funding amounts to at total of more than 236 M euros total investment with an annual budget of about 44 M euros. The additional EU funding for networking, transnational access and joint research activities amounts to 14 M euros over four years. Joint research activities include 845 k euros for "OTTER" (overcoming technology barriers) and "FOSCIL" (complete control over coherent and intense light).

W Sandner also reported on the German national network comprising individual topical research networks such as "the study of transient structures in condense matter with fast x-ray sources" and the "interaction of intense laser fields with matter". J Schneider discussed x-ray FEL work in Germany .

D Ko presented an overview of recent South Korean high intensity laser initiatives. The Korean Ministry of Science and Technology (MOST) is sponsoring the construction of a new ultrahigh intensity (petawatt class, 30-50 fs) laser facility. The construction period will be 6 years, starting 2003 and the budget will be ~40M$. APRI is open to domestic and international collaborative research. More information is available on http://apri.kjist.ac.kr

G Mourou reviewed the material on the SAUUL initiative sent by T. Ditmire. The goal of SAUUL is develop new funding on the order of 40-60 M$ for operation and construction. The plan would be to establish 5 to 8 centers and to also utilize existing DoE facilities; four university "centers" were mentioned: Ohio State for attosecond work, Michigan and Texas for high intensity work, and Rochester for Fast Ignition studies. G Mourou also reported on the ALLS project/network in Canada which will be an international facility with lasers ranging from high repetition rate, low intensity to ultrahigh intensity with a 200 TW upper range, with considerable emphasis on imaging studies. The full system will be operational in 2006. 15M$ is the budget.

9-10. C Barty presented a 30 minute summary of the status of the ICUIL 2004 conference which will be held at the Granlibakken Hotel and Resort on 3-7 October 2004. W Sandner described plans for the workshop on characterization of ultrahigh intensity lasers that will be held for two days preceding the ICUIL conference, at the same location.

11-13. R Clark from Rutherford Appleton Laboratory presented an overview of radiological protection studies conducted for the RAL PW facility. A. Migus discussed possibilities for Exawatt lasers. He also discussed the plans for multipetawatt lasers on LIL. The LIL petawatt will be built in 3 phases and may require 45 Meuro total funding. First phase will be at the joule level but will demonstrate full-scale phased gratings. Funding for phase 1 is 15 Meuro and has begun. Completion will be 2008. The possibility for sub-exawatt laser at the 100 PW level was also discussed. The estimates assume a 1 J/cm2 damage threshold for gratings and operation at 25 fs. The government of the Aquitaine region is willing to help develop a path to an exawatt laser on the time scale of 3 or 4 years after the multipetawatt laser. The end of the roadmap would be a 0.3 Exawatt system, 7500 Joules in 25 fs pumped by 20 kJ of long pulse green light using 95% diffraction efficiency gratings operating at 1 J/cm2.

J Collier from RAL reviewed the prospects for ultrahigh peak power generation with OPCPAs. They have designs for OPCPA pumped by frequency doubled Vulcan pump light that suggest 3 PW production with 27 fs compressed pulse duration. 20 Joule amplification has been conducted which produced a Strehl ratio of ~0.7. 25% conversion efficiency was demonstrated. Future kJ pumped systems could also reach the 0.3 EW level. It would seem that the principle leverage of the OPCPA scheme at high energy is that the transverse ASE problem present in conventional media amps is not present. The crystals do, however, become thin (of the order of millimeters).

14-15. T Tajima presented some thoughts on the marriage between lasers and accelerators in the context of a new Japanese project called REEFS (relativistic engineering and extreme field science). Recent calculations suggest that the laser based acceleration of protons at Exawatt levels would produce GeV beams.

R Falcone presented a road map toward a short wavelength FEL. Existing and proposed ultra-fast x-ray facilities were listed. LCLS has a document available on the web describing possible first experiments. The LCLS baseline project is projected to be about 315M$. In advance of the LCLS a short undulator has been put on SLAC and is called the Sub-Picosecond Pulse Source (SPPS). This has generated x-rays with 3 nJ per pulse at 100 fs and can focus to better than 1 micron spot size, with 300 fs synchronism. The VUV FEL at DESY will be operation in about a year. LCLS is planned for completion on the timescale of 2008. The requests for proposals of the DESY FEL came from all fields. X-ray FEL output will access an interesting parameter space with small ponderomotive energy (<1 eV) and large electric field (kV/nm). SPPS produces 1012 W/cm2, TTF II can go to above 1016 W/cm2.

16. There was discussion on a number of topics in the wrap-up session. A suggestion was made that members could propose, via email, suggestions for ICUIL panels. It was agreed that email communication, with copy to all members, is a convenient mechanism that should be adopted by the committee in the interim between meetings. The issue of travel support for nominated members was also discussed. It was suggested that governments should be approached with requests for nominal funds in support of international cooperation. It was also suggested that profits from the ICUIL conference could be used for support although there may be problems related to such utilization of funds if initial financial support for the conference came directly from certain government sources.

The meeting ended promptly at 5:00 pm.
Deepak Mathur, Secretary