Abstract

The front end of an advanced KrF ICF system must have the flexibility to produce pulses of complex and highly reproducible shapes as well as a bandwidth which may need to be relatively large for optimum target coupling. These issues are presently being addressed in off-line experiments at Los Alamos, and a new front end will be incorporated into the Aurora laser system to provide the required flexibility for target physics experiments and for validation of laser modeling codes. We discuss here the techniques being used to generate these pulse shapes and the expected performance in the laser chain and will present the current status of system integration. Methods to produce broad bandwidth output are discussed elsewhere.¹

© 1990 Optical Society of America