World's Largest Laser Research Articles

Software solutions manage the definition, operation, maintenance and configuration control of the National Ignition Facility

The National Ignition Facility (NIF) is the world's largest laser composed of millions of individual parts brought together to form one massive assembly. Maintaining control of the physical definition, status and configuration of this structure is a monumental undertaking yet critical to the validity of experimental data and the safe operation of the facility. A major programmatic challenge is to deploy software solutions to effectively manage the definition, build, operation, and maintenance, and configuration control of all components of NIF. The strategy for meeting this challenge involves deploying and integrating an enterprise application suite of solutions consisting of both Commercial-Off-The-Shelf (COTS) products and custom developed software.This paper describes how this strategy has been implemented along with a discussion on the successes realized and the ongoing challenges associated with this approach.

Laser performance operations model (LPOM): a computational system that automates the setup and performance analysis of the national ignition facility

The National Ignition Facility (NIF) is a stadium-sized facility containing a 192-beam, 1.8 MJ, 500-TW, 351-nm laser system together with a 10-m diameter target chamber with room for many target diagnostics. NIF will be the world's largest laser experimental system, providing a national center to study inertial confinement fusion and the physics of matter at extreme energy densities and pressures. A computational system, the Laser Performance Operations Model (LPOM) has been developed and deployed that automates the laser setup process, and accurately predict laser energetics. LPOM determines the settings of the injection laser system required to achieve the desired main laser output, provides equipment protection, determines the diagnostic setup, and supplies post shot data analysis and reporting.

Detecting Dangerous Chemicals with Lasers, Exploring the Brain's Circuitry with Light and the World's Largest Laser System Featured at CLEO/QELS Meeting in San Jose

Detecting Dangerous Chemicals with Lasers, Exploring the Brain's Circuitry with Light and the World's Largest Laser System Featured at CLEO/QELS Meeting in San Jose

National Ignition Facility laser performance status

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.

Blazed GxL™ device for laser dream theatre at the Aichi expo 2005

A blazed GxL™ device is described as having high optical efficiency (> 70% for RGB lasers), and high contrast ratio (> 10,000:1), and that is highly reliable when used in a large‐area laser projection system. It has a robust design and precise stress control technology to maintain a uniform shape (bow and tilt) of more than 6,000 ribbons, a 0.25‐μm CMOS compatible fabrication processing and planarization techniques to reduce fluctuation of the ribbons, and a reliable Al‐Cu reflective film that provided protection against a high‐power laser. No degradation in characteristics of the GxL device is observed after operating a 5,000‐ lumen projector for 2,000 hours and conducting 2,000 temperature cycling tests at ‐20°C and +80°C. At the 2005 World Exposition in Aichi, Japan the world's largest laser projection screen with a size of 2005 inches (10 m × 50 m) and 6 million pixels (1,080 × 5,760) was demonstrated.

…as Livermore blasted for laser project

[SAN DIEGO] Mismanagement and poor planning have been blamed for significant cost overruns and delays in construction of the world's largest laser in California.

UK to help fund US laser fusion research

livermore, ca. The British government is to invest more than $100 million in the world's largest laser currently under construction at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory.