ABSTRACT
The technology of high power lasers has advanced significantly over the past decade. It is now possible to perform experiments with high energy “Petawatt” (1015 Watts) class laser systems at large laser facilities and similarly possible to perform high intensity experiments using ultrashort pulse laser systems (sub 50 fs) which have high repetition rates and which fit into a university scale laboratory (Perry and Mourou 1994). Both of these types of lasers are capable of producing unique states of matter which can have relativistic “temperatures” (Key et al. 1998), ultra-strong magnetic fields (Tatarakis et al 2002) and which can produce beams of energetic electrons (Mangles et al. 2004 - Faure et al 2004), ions (Clark et al. 2000) and gamma rays (Edwards et al. 2002). This has consequently led to a recent surge of interest in these systems for technological applications as well as for the examination of fundamental scientific issues.
