Solid State Laser Driver for an ICF Reactor

Abstract

A conceptual design is presented of the main power amplifier of a multi-beamline, multi-megawatt solid state ICF reactor driver. Simultaneous achievement of useful beam quality and high average power is achieved by a proper choice of amplifier geometry. An amplifier beamline consists of a sequence of facepumped rectangular slab gain elements, oriented at the Brewster angle relative to the beamline axis, and cooled on their large faces by helium gas that is flowing subsonically.¹ The infrared amplifier output radiation is shifted to an appropriately short wavelength (10% (including all flow cooling input power) when the amplifiers are pumped by efficient high-power AlGaAs semiconductor laser diode arrays.