What have we learned from particle simulations in laser fusion

It is impossible in a talk of half an hour to cover in details all the phenomena that have been studied for the problem of laser fusion. Rather than giving a global overview of the physics involved I have choosen to treat more extensively the problem of resonant absorption for which particle codes have been very useful. There will be three parts to my talk. In the first one I shall describe particle codes, showing how they work and what are their limitations, in the second one the resonant absorption process will be described and in the last one results of particle simulation will be described. (orig.)