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(Jipp-Worts-^ Lawrence Liverrnore Laboratory V1 PREPRINT UCRL- 79816 (jipp-worts-^ Lawrence Liverrnore Laboratory THE PERFORMANCE OF ARGUS AS A LASER FUSION FACILITY 0. R. Speck, W. W. Simmons, J. T. Hunt, M. J. Boyle, F. Rainer, E. K. Storm and C. D. Swift, , '• September 19, 1977 This paper was prepared for submission to the 11th European Conference on Laser Interaction with Matter Oxford, England, September 19-23, 1977. This Is a preprint of a paper intended for publication in a journal or proceedings. Since changes may be made before publication, this preprint is made available with the understanding that it will not be cited or reproduced without trie permission of the author. »^^ aw »• *~ mm 0ISTRIBUI ii.;. vi i HiS DOCUMENT IS UNLIMITED THE PERFORMANCE OF ARGUS AS A LASER FUSION FACILITY D. R. Speck, W. W. Simmons, 0. T. Hunt, M. J. Boyle, F. Rainer E. K. Storm and C. D. Swift Lawrence Livermore Laboratory University of California Livermore, California 94550 ABSTRACT During the fifteen months that the Argus laser facility has been operating we have had two primary goals. These are; (1) to provide focuso>le, well characterized, high power beams for laser fusion experiments and (2) to further understand the propagation of high power and energy pulses. Our propagation experiments have already led to increases in the laser utput power and system reliability. Pulses appropriate for advanced targets are., shaped to optimize the compression and heating of the target. In ge *ral they stress the laser in both limits of energy and power. In this work st.-eral results significant to the laser fusion program were realized. The neutron output of fusion targets increased by almost two orders of magnitude to more than 10^ neutron/shot. An improved beam propagation technique (image relaying) was developed and partially implemented. It increased the focusable output power for short pulses (30-100 ps) to more than 4.0 TW. More than one kilojoule/beam was extracted from the laser in a high quality beam in a one nanosecond Gaussian pulse. A complex two step optical pulse was generated* and successfully amplified to peak powers of more than 3.0 TW. The most recent of the system upgrades are complete image relaying and improved "CH laser disk edge coatings which are presently being implemented. These changes will farther improve laser and target performance. * Work performed under the auspices of the U.S. Energy Research and Development Administration under contract no. W-7405-Eng-48. ' • • . ,' l ' INTRODUCTION The*Argus laser fusion facility is a two beam Nd glass laser amplifier systems with 20 centimeter diameter output apertures focused in a vacuum target chamber by opposing f/1.0 lenses. (1.2) The laser is the first system optimized for short pulse operation with series spatial filters to overcome the effects of small scale self-focusing which limits the output power.(3>4»5) During the fifteen months Argus has been operating we have had two goals; (1) to provide well characterized high power beams for fusion experiments^) and (2) to further understand the propagation of high power and energy pulses. Our propagation experiments have led to increases in laser output power, to a better understanding of laser operation at longer pulse durations, and to Increases in system reliability. The results of these experiments will be presented in this paper. Figure 1 is a.photograph of the laser showing the layout of the components with the target chamber and laser output behind the partition in the upper left. Figure 2 is a photograph of one of the 20 centimeter aperture f/10 vacuum spatial filters. Two spatial filters of this size are used in each arm. Eleven spatial filters of various sizes are used in the system, one to smooth the beam output from the preamplifiers before the beamsplitter and sfive in each of the two arms. Figure 3 is a chronological summary of the short pulse focusable power output of Argus and the neutron yield from exploding pusher fusion targets. Early ,1976 was the build up phase. Single beam experiments began in June 1976 and two beam irradiation experiments began in early August 1976. Significant increases in output power occurred in September and December 1976. An increase in neutron yield followed shorty after each increase in output power. The.assessments of laser performance reported here were expedited by the extensive beam diagnostics set up on Argus. These diagnostics provide data on laser performance from each shot, provide target irradiation signatures for each target shot and provide a quick indication of any problems developing in .the laser system. Figure 4 is a schematic drawing of the laser showing the location of the beam diagnostics. Of particular relevance to the results P*.™y? "st KfAjf •« ——»<-- •••••Wf V IM (MM WWH GMWMaC NAlW K«" **• •»«•,!*« HUM taw !!£"*!'"""! "'"«•» .mtw<t •* MIM m m V •* aaauanan, mtmrnrn. •» <Nk iln aartaa aw IWW.I....<H ,I.». »«,,,IJ|,T. • —l»«l»^' an MMfcaI ,M a«aaMaa,>iatalai J" JJctaM, •<»#«««• «•• to aa wM m DISTRIBUTION Of THIS OOCUWFNT 2 discussed here are the streaking camera at the input to the amplifier chain and the incident beam diagnostics (7) behind the first turning mirror at the laser output. The incident beam diagnostics contain a Gunn calorimeter(8) to measure the laser energy and the photographic diagnostics shown in Figure 5. These include a near field photograph of the beam, a streaking camera photograph of the beam at a plane optically equivalent to the target plane, and an array camera photograph of the beam in several planes near the focus which includes the equivalent target plane. SHORT PULSE PERFORMANCE; " For short pulses (30 to 100 ps duration) the focusable output power is limited by losses from small scale self-focusing and by the efficiency with which the beam fills the laser apertures. Significant increases in focusable power from Argus (shown in Figure 3) resulted from increases in fill factor. To prevent significant lo^i of focusable power the incremental B integral(9), AB, between spatial filter pinholes must be less than 3.0. AB is defined by rSFn+1 AB = kyl Idl J$Fr\ where the on-axis intensity integral includes all the material in the beam path. With this constraint the laser output power is direcfy proportional to the efficiency F with which the beam fills the laser apertures. fa L I(r)2llrdr _ Average Intensity Imaxira2 Peak Intensity To limit the initial amplitudes for the growth of the self-focusing instability, fill factor increases must be done in a manner which maintains a smooth intensity profile as the beam traverses the finite aperture components .... 3 • in the amplifier system. We have found the most efficient method of achieving ' this to be a beam propagation technique which we call image relaying.(1°) The central idea is to use a confocal lens pair to image the beam in a well defined object plane to a plane further down the amplifier chain. The intensity fluctuations from diffraction are thus minimized. If fully •> implemented to take advantage of the imaging properties of spatial filters the image of the •input beam defining aperture may be relayed to the end of the •amplifier chain, maintaining all of the high power components in the near field of the input, aperture. As initially implemented on Argus a lens pair relayed a hard edge beam defining aperture through the small diameter rod amplifiers, where a significant portion of the diffraction length occurs, to near the input to the first beam expanding spatial filter in each chain. The spatial"filters were not staged properly to relay this image further down the amplifier chain. Figure 6 shows a schematic drawing of this system and the original beam propagation scheme using a soft edge aperture. With the partial image relay the fill factor at the beam output increased from 0.5 to 0.7. When a hard-edged aperture was used in the initial configuration, a pronounced set of diffraction rings was present at the output of the 40 nm to 85 mm spatial filter. Figure 7 contrasts a beam photograph of this case with a similar one taken with the im^ge relay. The beam from the image relay shows very little diffraction but is dominated by noise at the bandpass of spatial filter. It results in a beam which is much more suitable for propagation through the remainder of the amplifier. We believe further improvements in fill factor will result when the spatial filters are restaged to fully implement the relay. With the partial image relay the output power of the North Arm of Argus has reached 2.8 TW and the total output power routinely exceeds 4.0 TW for short pulse target experiments. Pertinent laser parameters for 2.8 TW output are summarized in Figure 8, At these high powers self-focusing of the beam at the bandpass frequency'of thfc spatial filters constrains the output power. Near field photographs of the beam at low, intermediate, and high power shown in Figure 9 illustrate the growth of this bandpass noise as the power increases. The highest power output, however, is useful for target experiments. Figure 10 shows photographs and reduced microdensitometer scans of the'beam in the equivalent target plane for the same three shots. Power on target scales directly with output power but the beam structure frequency 4 increases with increasing output power. At 2.8 TW the output streaking camera photograph shows no temporal dip from self-focusing (Figure 11). Beam brightness does not increase significantly with increasing output power.. Figure 12 shows photographs of the beam at best focus from the same shots as Figures 8 and 9.
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