High-gain, Nd-doped-glass preamplifier for the National Ignition Facility (NIF) laser system

Author

Crane, John ; Martinez, Mikael ; Moran, Bryan ; Laumann, Curt ; Davin, James ; Rothenberg, Joshua ; Beach, Raymond ; Gollock, Brad ; Jones, Russ ; Wing, Ron ; Braucht, John ; Skulina, Ken ; Mitchell, Scott

Author_Institution

Lawrence Livermore Nat. Lab., CA, USA

Volume

2

fYear

1996

fDate

18-21 Nov. 1996

Firstpage

218

Abstract

The large Nd-doped glass laser preamplifier system for the National Ignition Facility (NIF) is comprised of 192 separate beam lines that each produce about 20 kJ of 1.05 micron light. The architecture consists of a central, all-fiber master oscillator system, where the light is generated, shaped, modulated, and distributed to 192 beam lines. Next, 192 preamplifier modules amplifier the tailored pulses from 1 nJ up to 10 J, whereupon they are transported to the large amplifier chains where the laser energy is increased to the 20 kJ level. The preamplifier modules contain a diode-pumped regenerative amplifier (regen), two optical subsystems for spatial beam shaping and smoothing by spectral dispersion (SSD), and a larger four-pass amplifier. In this paper we describe the current design and performance of this high gain preamplifier.

Keywords

laser beams; modules; neodymium; optical design techniques; optical dispersion; optical pumping; plasma production by laser; preamplifiers; solid lasers; 1 nJ to 10 J; 20 kJ; National Ignition Facility laser system; Nd-doped-glass laser preamplifier; all-fiber master oscillator system; beam lines; diode-pumped regenerative amplifier; four-pass amplifier; high gain preamplifier design; large amplifier chains; laser energy; optical beam shaping; optical subsystems; preamplifier modules; spatial beam shaping; spectral dispersion smoothing; tailored pulses; Glass; Ignition; Laser beams; Optical amplifiers; Optical modulation; Optical pulses; Oscillators; Preamplifiers; Pulse amplifiers; Semiconductor optical amplifiers;

fLanguage

English

Publisher

ieee

Conference_Titel

Lasers and Electro-Optics Society Annual Meeting, 1996. LEOS 96., IEEE

Conference_Location

Boston, MA, USA

Print_ISBN

0-7803-3160-5

Type

conf

DOI

10.1109/LEOS.1996.571631

Filename

571631