LLE review

Technical Report · Sun Jan 01 00:00:00 EST 1989

DOI:https://doi.org/10.2172/7043176· OSTI ID:7043176

Bradley, D. K. ^[1]

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1. ed.

This volume of the LLE Review, covering the period October--December 1989, contains an article discussing saturation effects and power-balance considerations in the design of high-power lasers and an article describing numerical modeling of the effects of power imbalances on target behavior. The advanced technology section reports on the development of a liquid crystal laser-beam apodizer and an experiment to study the high-intensity ionization of noble gases. Finally, the activities of the National Laser Users Facility and the GDL and OMEGA laser facilities are summarized. The highlights of this issue are: The problem of achieving power balance in high-efficiency, multibeam lasers has been studied in terms of gain-saturation effects and the nonlinear nature of harmonic frequency conversion. It is shown that power imbalance can be minimized by balancing the gains and losses in equivalent amplification stages in each beamline. The effects of target implosion behavior of various power-imbalance sources in the OMEGA laser system have been studied using the two-dimensional hydrodynamics code ORCHID. The simulations show good agreement with an experiment in which a deliberate power imbalance was applied to the target drive. Laser-beam apodizers with large clear apertures have been fabricated using cholesteric liquid crystals. A soft-edge profile has been achieved by filling a cell with two separate liquid crystals with different selective-reflection bands, and allowing them to partially mix at the interface. A study of the ionization of noble gases in the tunneling regime using high- intensity, 1-ps pulses from the tabletop terawatt laser (T{sup 3}) has been carried out. The measured ion production is well predicted by a Coulomb barrier suppression ionization theory.

• Research Organization: Rochester Univ., NY (USA). Lab. for Laser Energetics
• Sponsoring Organization: DOE/DP
• DOE Contract Number: FC03-85DP40200
• OSTI ID: 7043176
• Report Number(s): DOE/DP/40200-112; ON: DE90008958
• Country of Publication: United States
• Language: English

Related Subjects

70 PLASMA PHYSICS AND FUSION TECHNOLOGY
LASERS
DESIGN
COULOMB FIELD
IONIZATION
LASER TARGETS
LASER-PRODUCED PLASMA
LIQUID CRYSTALS
OMEGA FACILITY
PROGRESS REPORT
RARE GASES
CRYSTALS
DOCUMENT TYPES
ELECTRIC FIELDS
ELEMENTS
FLUIDS
GASES
LIQUIDS
NONMETALS
PLASMA
TARGETS
700208* - Fusion Power Plant Technology- Inertial Confinement Technology