The petawatt laser and its application to inertial confinement fusion

Author

Perry, M.D. ; Stuart, B.C. ; Tietbohl, G. ; Miller, Jason ; Britten, J.A. ; Boyd, Robert ; Everett, Michael ; Herman, Scott ; Nguyen, Hien ; Powell, H.T. ; Shore, B.W.

Author_Institution

Lawrence Livermore Nat. Lab., CA, USA

fYear

1996

fDate

2-7 June 1996

Firstpage

307

Lastpage

308

Abstract

Summary form only given. A project to develop a 1000 TW (petawatt) class laser began in 1992 in order to provide the capability to examine the fast ignitor concept for inertial confinement fusion (ICF). The laser was designed to produce 1 kilojoule pulses with a duration less than 500 fsec and be focusable to a high irradiance. Near-diffraction-limited beams require large-scale pulse compression and sophisticated adaptive optics. Metallic gratings are capable of compressing near 1 kT pulses.

Keywords

high-speed optical techniques; optical focusing; optical pulse compression; plasma inertial confinement; plasma production by laser; solid lasers; 1 kJ; 100 TW; 100 to 300 ps; 1992; 20 ps; 500 fs; ICF; fast ignitor concept; focusable; high irradiation; inertial confinement fusion; kilojoule pulses; large-scale optical pulse compression; metallic gratings; near-diffraction-limited beams; petawatt laser; sophisticated adaptive optics; Adaptive optics; Gratings; Inertial confinement; Large-scale systems; Laser applications; Laser beams; Laser fusion; Optical design; Optical pulses; Pulse compression methods;

fLanguage

English

Publisher

ieee

Conference_Titel

Lasers and Electro-Optics, 1996. CLEO '96., Summaries of papers presented at the Conference on

Conference_Location

Anaheim, CA, USA

Print_ISBN

1-55752-443-2

Type

conf

Filename

864714