Lasers & Optics

Non-burning thermonuclear fuel implosion experiments have been fielded on the National Ignition Facility to assess progress toward ignition by indirect drive inertial confinement fusion. These experiments use cryogenic fuel ice layers, consisting of mixtures of tritium and deuterium with large amounts of hydrogen to control the neutron yield.

We investigate a plasmonic resonant structure tunable from ultra-violet to near infrared wavelengths with maximum absorbance strength over 95% due to a highly efficient coupling with incident light.

The National Ignition Facility (NIF) at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory includes a precision laser system now capable of delivering 1.8 MJ at 500 TW of 0.35-μm light to a target.

A new generation of hollow waveguide (HWG) gas cells of unprecedented compact dimensions facilitating low sample volumes suitable for broad- and narrow-band mid-infrared (MIR; 2.5–20 μm) sensing applications is reported: the substrate-integrated hollow waveguide (iHWG).

Research shows that the interaction of relativistic-intensity, picosecond laser pulses with solid targets is affected by the reflected light through the strong currents and 104  T magnetic fields it produces.

Pulsed electron sources with high instantaneous current have successfully shortened exposure times (thus increasing the temporal resolution) by about six orders of magnitude over conventional sources while providing the necessary signal-to-noise ratio for dynamic imaging.

The ability to fabricate 4-level diffractive structures with 1 µm critical dimensions has been demonstrated for the creation of fast (∼f/3.1 at 633 nm) Fresnel zone lenses (FZLs) with >60% diffraction efficiency into the −1 focusing order and nearly complete suppression of 0 and +1 orders.

Experiments on the Titan laser at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory were carried out in order to study the properties of fast electrons produced by high-intensity, short pulse laser interacting with matter under conditions relevant to fast ignition.

Presents the first results from an experimental campaign to measure the atomic ablator-gas mix in the deceleration phase of gas-filled capsule implosions on the National Ignition Facility.

This research examine the responses of two candidate capping layer materials, made of SiO2 and Al2O3, over silica-hafnia multilayer coatings to protect high-reflection mirror coatings.