Abstract

The ability to produce precisely shaped output pulses from an inertial confinement fusion (ICF) laser driver, particularly pulses with a long low-level "foot" followed by a short spike, is believed to be important for attaining successful implosions of ICF targets.¹ A major benefit that results from the multiplexed architecture of KrF ICF amplifier chains, in which a train of identical, possibly overlapped, short pulses are used to load the long-pulse amplifiers, is the possibility of amplifying a shaped laser pulse with little or no change in the pulse shape.² Distortionless amplification results if the sum of the intensities of the multiplexed pulses incident upon an amplifier is constant in time, provided the amplifier pumping does not change appreciably during an individual pulse. In this limit, each portion of a pulse experiences the same saturated gain.

© 1991 Optical Society of America