Statements in which the resource exists as a subject.
PredicateObject
rdf:type
lifeskim:mentions
pubmed:issue
16
pubmed:dateCreated
2007-5-21
pubmed:abstractText
The National Ignition Facility (NIF) is the world's largest laser system. It contains a 192 beam neodymium glass laser that is designed to deliver 1.8 MJ at 500 TW at 351 nm in order to achieve energy gain (ignition) in a deuterium-tritium nuclear fusion target. To meet this goal, laser design criteria include the ability to generate pulses of up to 1.8 MJ total energy, with peak power of 500 TW and temporal pulse shapes spanning 2 orders of magnitude at the third harmonic (351 nm or 3omega) of the laser wavelength. The focal-spot fluence distribution of these pulses is carefully controlled, through a combination of special optics in the 1omega (1053 nm) portion of the laser (continuous phase plates), smoothing by spectral dispersion, and the overlapping of multiple beams with orthogonal polarization (polarization smoothing). We report performance qualification tests of the first eight beams of the NIF laser. Measurements are reported at both 1omega and 3omega, both with and without focal-spot conditioning. When scaled to full 192 beam operation, these results demonstrate, to the best of our knowledge for the first time, that the NIF will meet its laser performance design criteria, and that the NIF can simultaneously meet the temporal pulse shaping, focal-spot conditioning, and peak power requirements for two candidate indirect drive ignition designs.
pubmed:commentsCorrections
pubmed:language
eng
pubmed:journal
pubmed:status
PubMed-not-MEDLINE
pubmed:month
Jun
pubmed:issn
0003-6935
pubmed:author
pubmed:issnType
Print
pubmed:day
1
pubmed:volume
46
pubmed:owner
NLM
pubmed:authorsComplete
Y
pubmed:pagination
3276-303
pubmed:dateRevised
2008-8-7
pubmed:year
2007
pubmed:articleTitle
National Ignition Facility laser performance status.
pubmed:affiliation
Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, Livermore, CA 94551, USA. haynam1@llnl.gov
pubmed:publicationType
Journal Article