System operations of mercury; a diode-pumped solid-state laser

Author

Bayramian, A.J. ; Armstrong, P. ; Beach, R.J. ; Bibeau, C. ; Campbell, R. ; Ebbers, C.A. ; Freitas, B.L. ; Ladran, T. ; Menapace, J. ; Payne, S.A. ; Peterson, N. ; Schaffers, K.I. ; Stolz, C. ; Telford, S. ; Tassano, J.B. ; Utterback, E.

Author_Institution

Lawrence Livermore Nat. Lab., CA, USA

fYear

2005

fDate

12-17 June 2005

Firstpage

26

Abstract

The Mercury laser project is part of a national inertial fusion energy program in which four driver technologies are being considered including solid-state lasers, krypton fluoride gas lasers, Z-Pinch and heavy ions. Mercury´s operational goals of 100 J, 10 Hz, 10% efficiency in a 5 times diffraction limited spot will demonstrate the critical technologies required for scaling the system to the multi-kilojoule level. Five one hour runs were conducted to assess system stability and reliability; energy fluctuations during the 55 J operations showed a 0.6% rms deviation. Current beam quality during average power operation is approximately 10 times diffraction limited. In the future, active wavefront control, and corrector plates for steady state thermal distortions will be implemented to achieve the 5 times diffraction limited spot.

Keywords

Z pinch; gas lasers; mercury (metal); optical pumping; solid lasers; 10 Hz; 10 percent; 100 J; KrF; Z-Pinch; active wavefront control; corrector plates; current beam quality; diode-pumped solid-state laser; energy fluctuation; heavy ions; krypton fluoride gas lasers; mercury; national inertial fusion energy program; steady state thermal distortions; system operation; system stability; Diffraction; Diodes; Gas lasers; Laboratories; Laser fusion; Operational amplifiers; Optical amplifiers; Pulse amplifiers; Slabs; Solid lasers;

fLanguage

English

Publisher

ieee

Conference_Titel

Lasers and Electro-Optics Europe, 2005. CLEO/Europe. 2005 Conference on

Print_ISBN

0-7803-8974-3

Type

conf

DOI

10.1109/CLEOE.2005.1567815

Filename

1567815