NIF aims to create a single 500 terawatt (TW) flash of light that reaches the target from numerous directions at the same time, within a fewpicoseconds. The design uses 192 individual "beamlets", which are amplified in 48 beamlines containing 16 laser amplifiers per line, each one amplifying four of the beamlets.
To ensure that the output of the beamlines is uniform, the initial laser light is amplified from a single source in the Injection Laser System (ILS). This starts with a low-power flash of 1053 nanometers (nm) infra-red light generated in an ytterbium-doped optical fiber laser known as the Master Oscillator. The light from the Master Oscillator is split and directed into 48 Preamplifier Modules (PAMs). The PAMs pass the light four times through a circuit containing a neodymium glass amplifier similar to (but much smaller than) the ones used in the main beamlines, boosting the nanojoules of light created in the Master Oscillator to about 6 joules. According to LLNL, the design of the PAMs was one of the major stumbling blocks during construction. Improvements to the design since then have allowed them to surpass their initial design goals.
After the amplification is complete the light is "switched" back into the beamline, where it runs to the far end of the building to the Target Chamber. The target chamber weighs 287,000 pounds (130,000 kg), with a diameter of 10 meters. The total length of the laser from one end to the other is about 1,000 feet (300 meters). A considerable amount of this length is taken up by "spatial filters", small telescopes that focus the laser beam down to a tiny point, with a mask cutting off any stray light outside the focal point. The filters ensure that the image of the beam when it reaches the target is extremely uniform, removing any light that was mis-focussed by imperfections in the optics upstream. Spatial filters were a major step forward in ICF work when they were introduced in the Cyclops laser, an earlier LLNL experiment. The various optical elements in the beamlines are generally packaged into Line Replaceable Units (LRUs), standardized boxes about the size of a small car that can be dropped out of the beamline for replacement from below.The main amplification takes place in a series of glass amplifiers located at one end of the beamlines. Before "firing", the amplifiers are first optically pumped by a total of 7,680 xenon flash lamps (the PAMs have their own smaller flash lamps as well). The lamps are powered by a capacitor bank which stores a total of 422 megajoules (MJ) of electrical energy. When the wavefront passes through them, the amplifiers release some of the light energy stored in them into the beam. To improve the energy transfer the beams are sent though the main amplifier section four times, using an optical switch located in a mirrored cavity. In total these amplifiers boost the original 6 J provided by the PAMs to a nominal 4 MJ. Given the time scale of a few billionths of a second, the power is correspondingly very high, 500 TW.
Just before reaching the Target Chamber the light is reflected off various mirrors in the switchyard in order to impinge on the target from different directions. Since the length of the overall path from the Master Oscillator to the target is different for each of the beamlines, optics are used to delay the light in order to ensure all of them reach the center within a few picoseconds of each other.As can be seen in the layout diagram above, NIF normally directs the laser into the chamber from the top and bottom. The target area and switchyard system can be reconfigured by moving half of the 48 beamlines to alternate positions closer to the equator of the target chamber.
One of the last steps in the process before reaching the target chamber is to convert the infrared light at 1053 nm into the ultraviolet (UV) at 351 nm in a device known as a frequency converter.These are made of thin sheets cut from a single crystal of potassium dihydrogen phosphate. When the 1053 nm (IR) light passes through the first of two of these sheets, frequency addition converts a large fraction of the light into 527 nm light (green). On passing through the second sheet, frequency combination converts much of the 527 nm light and the remaining 1053 nm light into 351 nm (UV) light. IR light is much less effective than UV at heating the targets, because IR couples more strongly with hot electrons which will absorb a considerable amount of energy and interfere with compressing the target. The conversion process is about 50% efficient, reducing delivered energy to a nominal 1.8 MJ.
One important aspect of any ICF research project is ensuring that experiments can actually be carried out on a timely basis. Previous devices generally had to cool down for hours to allow the flashlamps and laser glass to regain their shapes after firing (due to thermal expansion), limiting use to one or fewer firings a day. One of the goals for NIF is to reduce this time to 5 hours, in order to allow 700 firings a year.
Portion of article taken from Wikipedia. See full article here
