Review of upconverted Nd-glass laser plasma experiments at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory

Systematic scaling experiments aimed at deducing the dependence of laser-plasma interaction phenomena on target plasma material and target irradiation history have been underway in laboratories all over the world in recent years. During 1980 and 1981 the Livermore program undertook to measure the laser light absorption of high and low Z plasmas and the partition of the absorbed energy amongst the thermal and suprathermal electron populations as a function of both laser intensity and wavelength. Simulations suggested that short wavelength laser light would couple more efficiently than longer wavelengths to target plasmas. Shorter wavelength heating of higher electron plasma densities would, it was felt, lead to laser-plasma interactions freer of anomalous absorption processes. The following sections review LLNL experiments designed to test these hypotheses

Novette facility: activation and preliminary experimental results

The construction and performance of the Novette Laser/Target interaction system are described

Recent progress in inertial confinement fusion at the Lawrence Livermore Laboratory

The Shiva and Argus laser systems at Livermore have been developed to study the physics of inertial confinement fusion. Both laser system designs are predicated on the use of large aperture Nd-glass disk amplifiers and high power spatial filters. During the past year we have irradiated DT filled microshell targets with and without polymer coatings. Recently new instruments have been developed to investigate implosion dynamics and to determine the maximum fuel density achieved by these imploded fusion pellets. A series of target irradiations with thin wall microshells at 15 to 20 TW, exploding pusher designs, resulted in a maximum neutron yield of 3 x 10/sup 10/. Polymer coated microshells designed for high compression were subjected to 4 kJ for 0.2 ns and reached fuel densities of 2.0 to 3.0 gm/cm/sup 3/. Results of these and other recent experiments will be reviewed

Toward high brightness, multi-kilowatt solid state lasers

High average power (HAP) solid state laser output with improved beam quality has introduced new capabilities in materials processing. At the 500 W level and with a beam quality of a few'' times the diffraction limit, the General Electric NY slab is able to drill 5 cm of stainless steel in a few seconds. We expect that 2--3 kW of near infrared laser output in a low order spatial mode would enable metal working now unknown to industry. The HAP output of slab lasers is limited by the size of the available laser crystals and the pump power. Core free, six cm diameter NY boules have been grown on an experimental basis. High optical quality NG can be obtained up to 10 cm in diameter. We present the results of our modeling based on these crystals pumped by advanced arc-lamps or laser diode arrays. We project HAP laser outputs of 1.6 kW from an existing Vortek pumped NG oscillator and about 2 kW from diode pumped NY device. Several kW of laser output can be expected from two such slabs in a MOPA configuration before optical damage limits are reached. The three dimensional stress-optic code which we used to optimize our designs, was normalized to available experimental data obtained with the above NG slab at the 500 W level and a 40 W diode pumped NY test bed. Our calculations indicate the essential parameters for attainment of high beam quality. Cooling uniformity across the pumped faces of the slab is critical and the location of the transition between pumped and un-pumped regions towards the slab tips is very important. A flat pumping profile was found to be desirable and predicted one wave of distortion which should be correctable over about 75% of the aperture however, an even better wavefront was predicted over 90% of the aperture when the regions near the edges of the slab were slightly over-pumped relative to the central regions and the regions near to the ends were tapered to compensate for transition effects

The accumulation of particles in ureteric stents is mediated by flow dynamics: Full-scale computational and experimental modeling of the occluded and unoccluded ureter

Ureteric stents are clinically deployed to restore urinary drainage in the presence of ureteric occlusions. They consist of a hollow tube with multiple side-holes that enhance urinary drainage. The stent surface is often subject to encrustation (induced by crystals-forming bacteria such as Proteus mirabilis) or particle accumulation, which may compromise stent's drainage performance. Limited research has, however, been conducted to evaluate the relationship between flow dynamics and accumulation of crystals in stents. Here, we employed a full-scale architecture of the urinary system to computationally investigate the flow performance of a ureteric stent and experimentally determine the level of particle accumulation over the stent surface. Particular attention was given to side-holes, as they play a pivotal role in enhancing urinary drainage. Results demonstrated that there exists an inverse correlation between wall shear stress (WSS) and crystal accumulation at side-holes. Specifically, side-holes with greater WSS levels were those characterized by inter-compartmental fluid exchange between the stent and ureter. These "active " side-holes were located either nearby ureteric obstructions or at regions characterized by a physiological constriction of the ureter. Results also revealed that the majority of side-holes (> 60%) suffer from low WSS levels and are, thus, prone to crystals accumulation. Moreover, side-holes located toward the proximal region of the ureter presented lower WSS levels compared to more distal ones, thus suffering from greater particle accumulation. Overall, findings corroborate the role of WSS in modulating the localization and extent of particle accumulation in ureteric stents. (C) 2022 Author(s)

The accumulation of particles in ureteric stents is mediated by flow dynamics: Full-scale computational and experimental modeling of the occluded and unoccluded ureter

Ureteric stents are clinically deployed to restore urinary drainage in the presence of ureteric occlusions. They consist of a hollow tube with multiple side-holes that enhance urinary drainage. The stent surface is often subject to encrustation (induced by crystals-forming bacteria such as Proteus mirabilis) or particle accumulation, which may compromise stent's drainage performance. Limited research has, however, been conducted to evaluate the relationship between flow dynamics and accumulation of crystals in stents. Here, we employed a full-scale architecture of the urinary system to computationally investigate the flow performance of a ureteric stent and experimentally determine the level of particle accumulation over the stent surface. Particular attention was given to side-holes, as they play a pivotal role in enhancing urinary drainage. Results demonstrated that there exists an inverse correlation between wall shear stress (WSS) and crystal accumulation at side-holes. Specifically, side-holes with greater WSS levels were those characterized by inter-compartmental fluid exchange between the stent and ureter. These “active” side-holes were located either nearby ureteric obstructions or at regions characterized by a physiological constriction of the ureter. Results also revealed that the majority of side-holes (>60%) suffer from low WSS levels and are, thus, prone to crystals accumulation. Moreover, side-holes located toward the proximal region of the ureter presented lower WSS levels compared to more distal ones, thus suffering from greater particle accumulation. Overall, findings corroborate the role of WSS in modulating the localization and extent of particle accumulation in ureteric stent

The Expectation Monad in Quantum Foundations

The expectation monad is introduced abstractly via two composable adjunctions, but concretely captures measures. It turns out to sit in between known monads: on the one hand the distribution and ultrafilter monad, and on the other hand the continuation monad. This expectation monad is used in two probabilistic analogues of fundamental results of Manes and Gelfand for the ultrafilter monad: algebras of the expectation monad are convex compact Hausdorff spaces, and are dually equivalent to so-called Banach effect algebras. These structures capture states and effects in quantum foundations, and also the duality between them. Moreover, the approach leads to a new re-formulation of Gleason's theorem, expressing that effects on a Hilbert space are free effect modules on projections, obtained via tensoring with the unit interval.Comment: In Proceedings QPL 2011, arXiv:1210.029