Recent Progress of Laser Fusion

[Abstract] Inertial confinement fusion has made a great progress. In fact several significant scientific firsts have been achieved in the recent years. These developments have presented the ICF community with the opportunity to embark on a new phase in the ICF research. The key issues of laser fusion are to attain a high absorption of laser light in a plasma, to prevent preheating of the fuel during the compression and to achieve highly efficient implosion by the uniform compression of the fuel due to the homogeneous deposition of laser energy on the pellet surface. Direct drive and indirect drive have been investigated. The progress in both schemes is remarkable. The neutron yield by the stagnation free compression of the LIIART target has attained 10^ which corresponds the pellet gain 1/500. The plastic shell target has reached the fuel density as large as 600 times of the liquid density which is measured by the Si activation method as well as the D knockon method. These data endorse that the attainment of breakeven will be soon