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Statistical projections for the Kirkland area show that there will be a 31-percent population increase by the year 2000. More important, from a real estate perspective, employment is projected to be up 67 percent in the next 13 years. Considering the number of new commercial developments proposed and under construction in Kirkland, coupled with these growth projections, it seems important to turn attention to this expanding industrial marketplace. Traditionally, the Kirkland market, an area that extends north from 124th Avenue East and west of Interstate 405, has been dominated by light industrial, combination space. (excerpt)

On Oct. 20, there will be a prolonged drum roll, a clashing of cymbals, a gala celebration -- and a collective civic sigh of relief. Construction on the Metro bus tunnel will move underground; the Westlake project will be completed; and, if everything measures up to expectations, Seattle's downtown retail core will cease to look like downtown Beirut. A brass band will play a triumphant tune, one that contains a message -- a threat, really -- to suburban shopping malls: Downtown's back, and it's going to steal your business. (excerpt)

When an intense laser pulse hits a flat metal foil, it ejects a spray of high-energy protons. Laser irradiation of a curved foil covering the tip of a hollow cone focuses the protons to intensities that could be useful for generating extreme states of matter. Recent progress in generating high-energy (>50 MeV) protons from intense laser–matter interactions (10 18 –10 21  W cm −2 ; refs  1 , 2 , 3 , 4 , 5 , 6 , 7 ) has opened up new areas of research, with applications in radiography 8 , oncology 9 , astrophysics 10 , medical imaging 11 , high-energy-density physics 12 , 13 , 14 , and ion-proton beam fast ignition 15 , 16 , 17 , 18 , 19 . With the discovery of proton focusing with curved surfaces 20 , 21 , rapid advances in these areas will be driven by improved focusing technologies. Here we report on the first investigation of the generation and focusing of a proton beam using a cone-shaped target. We clearly show that the focusing is strongly affected by the electric fields in the beam in both open and enclosed (cone) geometries, bending the trajectories near the axis. Also in the cone geometry, a sheath electric field effectively ‘channels’ the proton beam through the cone tip, substantially improving the beam focusing properties. These results agree well with particle simulations and provide the physics basis for many future applications.

The Big Area BackLigher (BABL) has been developed for large area laser-driven x-ray backlighting on the National Ignition Facility (NIF), which can be used for general High Energy Density (HED) experiments. The BABL has been optimized via hydrodynamic simulations to produce laser-to-x-ray conversion efficiencies of up to nearly 5%. Four BABL foil materials, Zn, Fe, V, and Cu, have been used for He-α x ray production.

Research at Los Alamos on fusion fast ignition (FI) [1] initiated by laser-driven ion beams heavier than protons has produced encouraging results. The minimum requirements for FI are relatively well understood [2]. Based on simple considerations and on those requirements, it is shown that FI of the compressed DT fuel using laser-driven heavy ion beams has advantages compared to laser-driven proton or electron beams, along with different risks compared to those approaches. Using a technologically convenient light-ion species such as Carbon, ∼ 100-fold fewer ions may deliver the energy necessary to ignite, simplifying target fabrication. Key requirements for success include the generation of a monoenergetic beam (energy spread ≤ ∼ 10%), a sufficiently high ion kinetic energy (∼ 450 MeV for C), and a sufficiently high conversion efficiency of laser to beam energy. An important benefit of this scheme is that such a high-energy, quasi-monoenergetic beam may be generated far from the capsule (∼ 1 cm away), eliminating the need for a reentrant cone in the capsule, a tremendous practical benefit. This paper summarizes our progress in meeting those requirements, and the results of an integrated 2D design for a proof of principle FI experiment based on this concept.

Omega EP is capable of producing 1000 J in 10 ps and is currently the most energetic short-pulse laser in the world. The performance of EP in terms of proton beam energies is compared with other laser systems worldwide at similar intensities. Omega EP results are discussed in the context of these lasers and the empirical ∼ 60 MeV barrier, which has existed since the discovery of forward laser-accelerated protons in 2000 [1–2].