Damage from pulses with arbitrary temporal shapes

Abstract

In fusion laser designs, the laser pulse has a complicated temporal shape which undergoes significant change as it passes through the laser. Our damage data, however, was taken with pulses whose temporal shapes were (more or less) Gaussian. We want to determine the damage propensity of a material exposed to a pulse of arbitrary temporal shape , given data taken with Gaussian pulses of different pulse widths. To do so, we must adopt a physical model of damage. This model will contain some number of parameters that depend on material properties, geometry, and so forth. We determine the parameters of the model appropriate to each material by fitting the model to the Gaussian data for that material. The resulting normalized model is then applied, using the appropriate pulse shape, to find the damage level for a specific material subjected to a specific pulse. The model we shall assume is related to diffusion, although (as we shall see) the experimental results do not fit any simple diffusion model. Initially, we will discuss simple diffusion models. We then examine some experimental data, and then develop a modified diffusive model from that data. That modified model is then used to predict damage levels in various portions of the NIF laser design.