Page 427 - High Power Laser Handbook

394 So l i d - S t at e La s e r s The National Ignition Facility Laser 395

2000 250 Measured (5316 J)
Power (GW/beam) 1000 Power (GW/beam) 150 Requested (5318 J)
200
1500
100
500
0 (a) 50 0 (b)
0 5 10 15 0 5 10 15
Time (ns) Time (ns)
3000 250 Measured (9457 J)
Power (GW/beam) 2000 Power (GW/beam) 150 Requested (9583 J)
2500
200
1500
100
1000
500
0 (c) 50 0 (d)
0 5 10 15 20 0 5 10 15 20
Time (ns) Time (ns)
Figure 14.35 Comparison of measurement to request for 1-MJ (a and b) and 1.8-MJ
(c and d) pulses, showing the peak (a and c) and foot (b and d) for both.

procedure to refine LPOM’s results and to adjust for minor discrep-
ancies between the model and measurements.
As Fig. 14.35 demonstrates, this iterative procedure led to an
accurate match to the requested pulse shapes at both 1 MJ and 1.8 MJ.
Once minor corrections to the drive prescription have been derived,
the results can be incorporated into the general LPOM description.
LPOM can then be relied on to make the desired pulse modifications
required for optimizing the drive to ignition capsules.

14.7 2010 NIF Status and Experiments
Sections 14.4 through 14.6 describe detailed measurements made on
eight arms of the NIF laser in 2005–2006, including single-beam mea-
surements in the PDS. These measurements were the first end-to-end
verification, using typical production hardware, that the NIF design
would be able to meet the functional requirements that had been laid
out in 1994. At the time of those measurements, 40 beamlines had
been operated in the infrared at greater than or equal to 19 kJ per
beamline. In the succeeding three and a half years, the remainder of
the laser construction and commissioning has been completed, and
NIF has demonstrated that it could fire at 3ω energies in excess of
1 MJ, with all required temporal pulse shaping, pointing, beam syn-
chronization, and focal spot conditioning (beam smoothing) in place.
As of mid-June 2010, 1795 full-system shots had been fired, for a
cumulative 102 MJ of 1ω energy and 42 MJ at 3ω. More than 90 shots
included targets, yielding important laser-plasma coupling and