Fast ignitor research at the Institute of Laser Engineering, Osaka University

Copyright 2001 American Institute of Physics. This article may be downloaded for personal use only. Any other use requires prior permission of the author and the American Institute of Physics. The following article appeared in Physics of Plasmas, 8(5), 2268-2274, 2001 and may be found at http://dx.doi.org/10.1063/1.135259

10-kJ PW Laser for the FIREX-I Program

A 10-kJ PW laser (LFEX) is under construction for the FIREX-I program. This paper reports a design overview of LFEX, the technological development of a large-aperture arrayed amplifier with modified four-pass architecture, wavefront correction, a large-aperture Faraday rotator with a superconducting magnet, a new pulse compressor arrangement, and focus control

“GENBU”-Laser Development with Cryogenic Yb:YAG Ceramic for Fusion Energy Reactor Driver

"A new diode-pumped laser fusion driver has been conceptually designed. The output power is 1.2 MJ and 0.1 MJ for a compression laser and a heating laser, respectively, at 16 Hz repetition rate and 17% electrical-optical efficiency. We have proposed two new technologies into the laser system to improve its laser output characteristics dramatically. One is cryogenic Yb:YAG ceramics as a laser material and the other is a large-aperture active-mirror as an amplifier architecture. An 1 kJ near-infrared laser is a basic unit for both compression and heating lasers, and its demonstration will become a milestone of the new driver. Recently, “GENBU”-laser has been designed in details for not only a milestone of the new reactor driver but also a tool for advanced application fields. A joule-class laser system of “GENBU-Kid” is under construction for power-scaling up to 1 kJ.