Fusion Lasers
"After building Fusion Lasers, everything else is easy." - RFA

Throughout the 1980's and into the early 1990's, I participated in the development of several generations of large-scale Fusion Lasers at Los Alamos National Laboratory.

These devices, some of which occupied several football fields in area, were among the largest and most powerful pulsed gas lasers ever built.

In 1990 I had the privilage of becoming part of the operations team on 'Aurora' which, on a good night, could produce twenty kilo-joules (20,000) of optical energy in a five nano-second (billionth's of a second) pulse.

Fusion lasers include many disciplines - Electronics, Optics, High Voltage, High Vacuum and Gas Handling, Electron Beam Pumping, Energy Diagnostics...
and a lot of Mechanical Design.

The photo below shows Auroras E-beam pumped 'Large Aperature Module' final amplifier.

The large metal tubes are high-voltage (1.2 MV) charge lines which transfer energy from the Marx banks (out of sight) to the Electron Guns (large rectangular boxes at the end of the charge lines) which, in turn, 'light up' the optical cavity by pumping the gas - in this case Flourine and Krypton - with secondary electrons.

Looking into the segmented window during Auroras unstable resonator configuration. I frequently worked inside the optical cavity of this laser !

The large ovals which surround the optical cavity are magnetic field generators
which focus the E-beams.

Among my accomplishments at LANL are:

Participation in the design, construction and operation of a 1 nano-second/1 KJ Co2 Laser system (M.A.R.S.).

Construction, implimentation and operation of a mask alignment system for Multiflex, the soft x-ray diagnostic in the Helios Laser target chamber - which was fundamental in predicting the hot electron problem in CO2 Laser Fusion - which, in turn, led to the construction of Aurora - which lased at 248 nanaometers, 40 times shorter in wavelength than CO2.

Optical beam train development which lead to the optical multiplexing scheme used on the Aurora Fusion Laser - '96 little boxcars of light' !

Design, construction, implimentation and operation of the laser beam periscope used to align the 44" diamond-turned Aluminum mirror (shown below) which was part of an unstable resonator optical cavity for Auroras L.A.M. (Large Aperature Module).

Design, construction, implementation and operation of most of the energy
diagnostics on the Aurora Laser Fusion system.

Design, construction & implimentation of a Flourine concentration measurement system.

Participation in an S.D.I. program.
(Don't ask)

Construction of a sub-nanosecond front end for the Antares Fusion Laser System - the largest Co2 Laser ever built at L.A.N.L. - or anywhere else.

Above is a photo of the Antares Final Amplifer Bay.
Each of the Antares Final Amplifiers was as large as a steam locomotive !

"Been there, done that."

See also: http://www.lxrdesign.biz/LASERS.htm

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