Performance of a prototype for a large-aperture multipass Nd:glass laser for inertial confinement fusion
- Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, University of California, P. O. Box 808, Livermore, California 94551 (United States)
The Beamlet is a single-beam prototype of future multibeam megajoule-class Nd:glass laser drivers for inertial confinement fusion. It uses a multipass main amplifier, adaptive optics, and efficient, high-fluence frequency conversion to the third harmonic. The Beamlet amplifier contains Brewster-angle glass slabs with a clear aperture of 39 cm{times}39 cm and a full-aperture plasma-electrode Pockels cell switch. It has been successfully tested over a range of pulse lengths from 1{endash}10 ns up to energies at 1.053 {mu}m of 5.8 kJ at 1 ns and 17.3 kJ at 10 ns. A 39-actuator deformable mirror corrects the beam quality to a Strehl ratio of as much as 0.4. The 1.053-{mu}m output has been converted to the third harmonic at efficiencies as high as 80{percent} and fluences as high as 8.7 J/cm{sup 2} for 3-ns pulses. {copyright} 1997 Optical Society of America
- Research Organization:
- Lawrence Livermore National Lab. (LLNL), Livermore, CA (United States)
- DOE Contract Number:
- W-7405-ENG-48
- OSTI ID:
- 542504
- Journal Information:
- Applied Optics, Vol. 36, Issue 21; Other Information: PBD: Jul 1997
- Country of Publication:
- United States
- Language:
- English
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