Excimer lasers for inertial confinement fusion

Abstract

Analysis of current state of the works in the field of laser ICF and prospectives to use of excimer KrF laser as a driver for ICF is conducted. The results of numerical irwestigations and optimization calculations of the simple KrF laser line (oscillator–double-pass amplifier) with the output energy from several kilojoules to several megajoules in wide region of pump power, gas mixture composition, geometry and cavity dimensions changing is presented. Existence of optimum parameters of amplifiers on its total efficiency is shown. Maximum efficiency of the laser line obtained from the calculations is 3.7%, when output laser energy is 70 kJ from the cavity 2 × 2 × 2 m (pump power and puleselength are 0.22 MW/cm³ and 0.45 μs, respectively).

Key Words:

• Excimer laser
• inertial confinement fusion
• numerical calculations
• KrF laser
• e-beam pumping
• large aperture module