LF Group, ILE, Osaka Univ.

13/05/2026

New preprint has been posted on ArXiv.
https://arxiv.org/pdf/2605.09191

In laser-driven fusion, one of the trickiest questions has been: what are the high-energy protons actually doing inside the target? Normal detectors only catch protons that escape — and those get scrambled by intense plasma fields on the way out. Our team came up with a clever workaround: let the target itself be the detector. As protons race through a boron target, they trigger tiny amounts of nuclear reactions that leave behind "fingerprints". By measuring those fingerprints after each shot, we can reconstruct the proton energy distribution inside the target — and count the proton–boron fusion reactions directly. We tested it on the kJ-class laser at Osaka, and it works even in setups where conventional diagnostics fail. A new window into what's really happening inside laser fusion targets!

18/04/2026

This is a message for those who understand Japanese.

電験・エネ験試験受験者に人気の雑誌「電気計算」の2026年5月号に藤岡さんの執筆の解説記事が掲載されました。

レーザ技術は、さまざまな分野での応用が進んでおり、その重要性はますます高まっている。レーザ技術は私たちの身近なところでも多く使用されている技術だが、レーザって何？ どんなところで使われているのかと疑問.....

03/04/2026

We held a welcome party for new members under the full-bloom cherry blossoms at Expo Commemoration Park. Three new members joined our group in April.

06/03/2026

Farewell party on a boat.

Prof. Miyamoto and Dr. Law will start new positions in April.
Mr. Akematsu and Mr. Oomura have received their master’s degrees and will start working at private companies.

We wish them great success in their new positions.

14/02/2026

After master thesis presentation.

14/02/2026

After opacity campaign.

20/01/2026

Snapshots at the 2025 end-of-year party and the 2026 new-year party.

24/12/2025

Karaki-san's paper has been published in the journal High Energy Density Physics.

This paper reports an experiment showing that heating a plasma becomes much more efficient when a very clean (high-contrast) high-intensity laser pulse is fired at a specially shaped target with a cone attached to a flat foil. The cone guides and focuses the laser energy toward its tip, so electrons in the target are heated to much higher temperatures (around ~9.9 keV) than when using a flat target or a lower-contrast laser. X-ray images and electron measurements indicate that the cone helps the laser light concentrate and transfer more energy into fast electrons and X-ray emission, which is essential for improving energy coupling in fast-ignition inertial confinement fusion research.

11/11/2025

Karaki-san, a graduate student in the Department of Physics, Graduate School of Science, The University of Osaka, who is conducting his research at the Institute of Laser Engineering, has received the Student Presentation Award at the 2025 Annual Meeting of the Physical Society of Japan.

His presentation, titled “Development of Liquid Deuterium Spheres for Fast-Ignition Inertial Confinement Fusion,” was highly evaluated by the review committee.

As a young researcher at the forefront of laser fusion research, he is expected to achieve outstanding results in the future. We sincerely congratulate him on this well-deserved award.

19/10/2025

We have successfully completed the collaborative experiment on Laser-Driven Magnetic Reconnection.

06/10/2025

Fujioka-san is selected as the program manager of the JST Moonshot Goal 10 program.
https://www.jst.go.jp/moonshot/news/20251006_3.html

Moonshot Goal 10: Realization of a dynamic society in harmony with the global environment and free from resource constraints, through diverse applications of fusion energy, by 2050.

ムーンショット目標１０におけるプロジェクトマネージャーが決定しました。