Performance results of the high-gain Nd:glass engineering prototype preamplifier module (PAM) for the National Ignition Facility (NIF)

Martinez, M.; Skulina, K.; Deadrick, F.J.; Crane, John K.; Moran, Bryan D.; Braucht, J.; Jones, Bobby A.; Hawkins, Steven A.; Tilley, Ronald; Crawford, James M.; Browning, Donald F.; Penko, Frank A.

doi:10.1117/12.349266

Cited by 4 publications

(2 citation statements)

References 0 publications

Supporting

Mentioning

Contrasting

Order By: Relevance

“…See Refs. [1][2][3][4][5][6][7][8][9][10] and the further references in those papers for detailed information. The performance of a physics prototype for the NIF laser, Beamlet, was described in this journal several years ago [11].…”

Section: B Laser Overviewmentioning

confidence: 99%

National Ignition Facility laser performance status

et al. 2007

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

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.

show abstract

Section: B Laser Overviewmentioning

confidence: 99%

National Ignition Facility laser performance status

et al. 2007

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…The light originates in the Injection Laser system 3,4 (ILS) which is composed of the master oscillator (MOR), the Pre-A mplifier Module 5,6 (PAM), the Input Sensor Package (ISP) and the Pre-Amplifier Beam Transport System (PABTS). In this configuration, there are two master oscillators which each generate a 960 Hz optical train of pulses.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

The injection laser system on the National Ignition Facility

et al. 2007

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

The National Ignition Facility (NIF) is currently the largest and most energetic laser system in the world. The main amplifiers are driven by the Injection Laser System comprised of the master oscillators, optical preamplifiers, temporal pulse shaping and spatial beam formatting elements and injection diagnostics. Starting with two fiber oscillators separated by up to a few angstroms, the pulse is phase modulated to suppress SBS and enhance spatial smoothing, amplified, split into 48 individual fibers, and then temporally shaped by an arbitrary waveform generator. Residual amplitude modulation induced in the preamplifiers from the phase modulation is also precompensated in the fiber portion of the system before it is injected into the 48 pre-amplifier modules (PAMs). Each of the PAMs amplifies the light from the 1 nJ fiber injection up to the multi-joule level in two stages. Between the two stages the pre-pulse is suppressed by 60 dB and the beam is spatially formatted to a square aperture with precompensation for the nonuniform gain profile of the main laser. The input sensor package is used to align the output of each PAM to the main laser and acquire energy, power, and spatial profiles for all shots. The beam transport sections split the beam from each PAM into four main laser beams (with optical isolation) forming the 192 beams of the NIF. Optical, electrical, and mechanical design considerations for long term reliability and availability will be discussed. Work performed under the auspices of the U. S. Department of Energy under contract W-7405-Eng-48.

show abstract