Present Status of Fast Ignition Research and Prospects of FIREX Project

This is the review on the laser fusion research at Institute of Laser Engineering of Osaka University. Since 1996, we have concentrated our efforts on fast ignition laser fusion research. By constructing 100 TW and 1Peta watt lasers, experiments on relativistic laser plasma interactions related to fast ignition and pellet implosion and heating have been carried out. The results indicate that imploded core plasma is heated with relatively high coupling efficiency. According to the above results, we started the FIREX (Fast Ignition Realization Experiment) project for demonstrating ignition and burn with a multi 10kJ short pulse laser. The future prospects of the project are presented in this paper.