Ultrashort, high-peak-power laser

Recent developments in ultrashort, high-peak-power laser systems, based on the chirped pulse amplification (CPA) technique, have opened up a new regime of laser-matter interactions [1,2]. The application of such laser pulses can currently yield laser peak intensities well above 1020 W cm 2 at high repetition rates [3]. One of the important features of such interactions is that the duration of the laser pulse is much shorter than the typical time scale of hydrodynamic plasma expansion, which allows isochoric heating of matter, i.e., the generation of hot plasmas at near-solid density [4], The heated region remains in this dense state for 1-2 ps before significant expansion occurs. 

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