High Energy Glass Lasers

Abstract

A number of laboratories throughout the world are actively pursuing the development of pulsed high power Nd:glass lasers for use in their laser fusion and laser plasma interaction studies programs. Perhaps the most ambitious programs in this field have been undertaken by the Lawrence Livermore Laboratory where several irradiation facilities are in opera-tion and where the 4-arm ARGUS and 20-arm SHIVA lasers are currently under construction. These systems are designed to provide the energy, power and wavefront uniformity required to spherically implode nuclear fuel targets such as the deuterium-tritium (DT) solid sphere, in an effort to achieve thermonuclear fusion through inertial confinement.