Important goals in DOE and DoD programs require multimegajoule laser pulses. For inertial confinement fusion there is also a requirement to deliver the pulse in about 25 nsec with a very particular power vs time profile-all at high overall efficiency and low cost per joule. After exhaustive consideration of various alternatives, our studies have shown that the most cost effective approach to energy scaling is to increase the size of the final amplifiers up to the 200 to 300 Id level. This conclusion derives largely from the fact that, at a given complexity, costs increase slowly with increasing part size while output energy should increase dramatically. Extrapolations to low cost by drastic cuts in the unit cost of smaller devices through mass production are considered highly risky. At a minimum the requirement to provide, space, optics and mounts for such systems will remain expensive.

Date Published: 11 March 1987
PDF: 3 pages
Proc. SPIE 0710, Excimer Lasers and Optics, (11 March 1987); doi: 10.1117/12.937291

Published in SPIE Proceedings Vol. 0710:
Excimer Lasers and Optics
Ting-Shan Luk, Editor(s)