Development of XUV lasers at the RAL central laser facility

Recent progress in the development of XUV lasers by research teams using high-power and ultrashort-pulse Nd:glass and KrF laser facilities at the Rutherford Appleton Laboratory is reviewed. Injector-amplifier operation and prepulse enhanced output of the Ge XXIII collisional laser driven by a kilojoule glass laser, enhanced gain in CVI recombination with picosecond CPA drive pulses from a glass laser, and optical field ionization and XUV harmonic generation with a KrF CPA laser are described.

The VLT-FLAMES survey of massive stars: NGC 346-013 as a test case for massive close binary evolution

Context. NGC 346-013 is a peculiar double-lined eclipsing binary in the Small Magellanic Cloud (SMC) discovered by the VLT-FLAMES survey of massive stars.