OMEGA EP: High-energy petawatt capability for the OMEGA laser facility

OMEGA EP (Extended Performance) is a petawatt-class addition to the existing 30-kJ, 60-beam OMEGA Laser Facility at the University of Rochester. When completed, it will consist of four beamlines, each capable of producing up to 6.5 kJ at 351 nm in a 1 to 10 ns pulse. Two of the beamlines will produce up to 2.6 kJ in a pulse-width range of 1 to 100 ps at 1053 nm using chirped-pulse amplification (CPA). This paper reviews both the OMEGA EP performance objectives and the enabling technologies required to meet these goals

Progress in direct-drive inertial confinement fusion

Significant progress has been made in direct-drive inertial confinement fusion research at the Laboratory for Laser Energetics since the 2009 IFSA Conference [R.L. McCrory et al., J. Phys.: Conf. Ser. 244, 012004 (2010)]. Areal densities of 300mg/cm2 have been measured in cryogenic target implosions with neutron yields 15% of 1-D predictions. A model of crossed-beam energy transfer has been developed to explain the observed scattered-light spectrum and laser–target coupling. Experiments show that its impact can be mitigated by changing the ratio of the laser beam to target diameter. Progress continues in the development of the polar-drive concept that will allow direct-drive–ignition experiments to be conducted on the National Ignition Facility using the indirect-drive-beam layout