Ultrafast Dynamics in Hot, Dense Laser Produced Plasmas

High intensity laser pulses create hot, dense plasma and relativistic electron jets when they irradiate a target. These electron jets carry the laser energy deep into the target, ionizing and heating the colder portion behind the laser generated plasma and exciting return shielding currents. These currents generate the largest terrestrially known magnetic fields (as high as 100s of mega-gauss). All these events in plasma occur in a femtosecond and picosecond timescales. Some of the questions that need to be addressed are “(1) Can one see all these ultrafast events as they occur? (2) What are the motions inside the plasma? (3) How do we measure such giant magnetic fields?” In this talk I will provide some answers to these questions. Also, I will highlight the recent setting up of a 100 TW laser facility in our laboratory, related developments, and future experiments.