This paper provides an up-to-date review of the problems related to the generation, detection and mitigation of strong electromagnetic pulses created in the interaction of high-power, high-energy laser pulses with different types of solid targets. It includes new experimental data obtained independently at several international laboratories. The mechanisms of electromagnetic field generation are analyzed and considered as a function of the intensity and the spectral range of emissions they produce. The major emphasis is put on the GHz frequency domain, which is the most damaging for electronics and may have important applications. The physics of electromagnetic emissions in other spectral domains, in particular THz and MHz, is also discussed. The theoretical models and numerical simulations are compared with the results of experimental measurements, with special attention to the methodology of measurements and complementary diagnostics. Understanding the underlying physical processes is the basis for developing techniques to mitigate the electromagnetic threat and to harness electromagnetic emissions, which may have promising applications.

The high frequency permeability of composites made of hollow conducting planes or tubes is derived. It is shown that such composites may exhibit permeability levels significantly different from unity, even for nonmagnetic metal volume fractions lower than 1%. This behavior is related to the skin effect, but it can occur for metal shell thicknesses much lower than the skin depth. The influence of the shape of the hollow inclusion on the permeability is reported. The maximum of the imaginary permeability can be tuned over a wide frequency range by adjusting the conductivity of the metal and the characteristic dimensions of the inclusions. The properties of composites made of hollow ferromagnetic planes are also investigated using experimental values obtained from materials made of ferromagnetic laminations.

Electromagnetic pulses (EMP) present a serious threat for operation of high-power, high-energy laser facilities. Here, we present an efficient strategy for EMP mitigation with a resistive and inductive holder, which is supported by extended numerical simulations and validated in dedicated experiments at the kilojoule/picosecond (kJ/ps) Petawatt Aquitaine Laser (PETAL) facility. Moreover, we demonstrate how a combination of PETAL with the tens of kJ/ns Laser MegaJoule (LMJ) beams may suppress the EMP emission. This method opens another efficient way for the EMP control on high-power, high-energy laser facilities.

A three-dimensional finite-element method with efficient boundary conditions is presented to simulate the electromagnetic properties of heterogeneous periodic materials. The analysis based on a waveguide approach applies to arbitrary profiles with any kind of inclusions for all incidence condition. The Floquet's theorem is used to take into account the periodicity of the problem. This method allows one to handle the scattering effects in the material. For periodically organized composite materials, we can extract an effective permeability and permittivity under certain hypotheses.