Beam Plasma and Inertial Fusion Physics in EPS

This is the first public announcement of a new Section on Beam Plasma and Inertial Fusion Physics (BP&IF) to be founded within the EPS Plasma Physics Division. The incentive originates from a wide-spread feeling that the division should broaden its scientific scope and put more attention to those areas of plasma physics which have strongly developed recently without being rooted in the division.

Following the creation of a Section on Dusty and Colloidal Plasmas in 2000, the BP&IF section is intended to respond to the rapid growth in dense plasma research with high power beams, in particular laser and ion beams. A large laser plasma community has evolved in Europe over the last 40 years with applications to Inertial Fusion Energy (IFE) as a major driving force. With IFE ignition facilities now under construction in France and USA, the physics of inertial fusion will be a focus of BP&IF activities, and this includes heavy ion beams and corresponding dense plasma research with nanosecond pulses.

Particular new drive for the BP&IF section stems from the recent success in producing ultrashort terawatt laser pulses in the range of femtoseconds, even with table-top devices. At focussed intensities up to 10^20 W/cm^2 and more, these pulses open a new branch of relativistic plasma physics with applications to ultrashort ultrabright X-ray sources including plasma X-ray lasers, to plasma-based high-gradient accelerators, to nuclear and particle physics, and also to inertial fusion. The interface with relativistic astrophysics (cosmic jets, etc.) will become important.

Beam plasma effects also find growing interest in the context of conventional accelerators and Free Electron Lasers (FEL). In addition, X-ray free electron lasers (XFEL) now under construction at DESY in Hamburg and at SLAC in Stanford will generate 100 fs, keV, terawatt X-ray pulses which will produce solid-density plasmas up to keV temperatures and Gbar pressures.

The BP&IF section intends to provide a general forum for beam plasma physics within EPS and to foster interdisciplinary plasma research in these new fields. It will care for adequate presentation at EPS conferences and organize topical meetings, first of all within EPS structures. The idea is to do this without increasing the number of conferences, but rather to better coordinate existing conference and workshop series and to merge them from time to time.

Of course, this requires the support of the groups and institutions working in this field in Europe. The plans to create the BP&IF section are presently discussed among scientists from different European countries. All those interested to join this discusion should write to J. Meyer-ter-Vehn (e-mail: meyer-ter-vehn@mpq.mpg.de). A first meeting of the BP&IF initiating group will take place on Monday, 18 June 2001, during the 5th Workshop on Fast Ignition of Fusion Targets organized at Madeira as a satellite meeting of the EPS Conference on Controlled Fusion and Plasma Physics.