The injection laser system on the National Ignition Facility

Mark Bowers; Scott Burkhart; Simon Cohen; Gaylen Erbert; John Heebner; Mark Hermann; Don Jedlovec

doi:10.1117/12.700478

9 March 2007 The injection laser system on the National Ignition Facility

Mark Bowers, Scott Burkhart, Simon Cohen, Gaylen Erbert, John Heebner, Mark Hermann, Don Jedlovec

Proceedings Volume 6451, Solid State Lasers XVI: Technology and Devices; 64511M (2007) https://doi.org/10.1117/12.700478
Event: Lasers and Applications in Science and Engineering, 2007, San Jose, California, United States

Abstract

The National Ignition Facility (NIF) is currently the largest and most energetic laser system in the world. The main amplifiers are driven by the Injection Laser System comprised of the master oscillators, optical preamplifiers, temporal pulse shaping and spatial beam formatting elements and injection diagnostics. Starting with two fiber oscillators separated by up to a few angstroms, the pulse is phase modulated to suppress SBS and enhance spatial smoothing, amplified, split into 48 individual fibers, and then temporally shaped by an arbitrary waveform generator. Residual amplitude modulation induced in the preamplifiers from the phase modulation is also pre-compensated in the fiber portion of the system before it is injected into the 48 pre-amplifier modules (PAMs). Each of the PAMs amplifies the light from the 1 nJ fiber injection up to the multi-joule level in two stages. Between the two stages the pre-pulse is suppressed by 60 dB and the beam is spatially formatted to a square aperture with pre-compensation for the nonuniform gain profile of the main laser. The input sensor package is used to align the output of each PAM to the main laser and acquire energy, power, and spatial profiles for all shots. The beam transport sections split the beam from each PAM into four main laser beams (with optical isolation) forming the 192 beams of the NIF. Optical, electrical, and mechanical design considerations for long term reliability and availability will be discussed. Work performed under the auspices of the U. S. Department of Energy under contract W-7405-Eng-48.

Citation Download Citation

Mark Bowers, Scott Burkhart, Simon Cohen, Gaylen Erbert, John Heebner, Mark Hermann, and Don Jedlovec "The injection laser system on the National Ignition Facility", Proc. SPIE 6451, Solid State Lasers XVI: Technology and Devices, 64511M (9 March 2007); https://doi.org/10.1117/12.700478

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