Trident laser
Encyclopedia
Solid-state laser
A solid-state laser is a laser that uses a gain medium that is a solid, rather than a liquid such as in dye lasers or a gas as in gas lasers. Semiconductor-based lasers are also in the solid state, but are generally considered as a separate class from solid-state lasers .-Solid-state...
facility located at Los Alamos National Laboratory
Los Alamos National Laboratory
Los Alamos National Laboratory is a United States Department of Energy national laboratory, managed and operated by Los Alamos National Security , located in Los Alamos, New Mexico...
(LANL website), in Los Alamos
Los Alamos, New Mexico
Los Alamos is a townsite and census-designated place in Los Alamos County, New Mexico, United States, built upon four mesas of the Pajarito Plateau and the adjoining White Rock Canyon. The population of the CDP was 12,019 at the 2010 Census. The townsite or "the hill" is one part of town while...
, New Mexico
New Mexico
New Mexico is a state located in the southwest and western regions of the United States. New Mexico is also usually considered one of the Mountain States. With a population density of 16 per square mile, New Mexico is the sixth-most sparsely inhabited U.S...
, originally built in the late 1980s for Inertial confinement fusion
Inertial confinement fusion
Inertial confinement fusion is a process where nuclear fusion reactions are initiated by heating and compressing a fuel target, typically in the form of a pellet that most often contains a mixture of deuterium and tritium....
(ICF) research by KMS Fusion, founded by Kip Siegel
Kip Siegel
Keeve M. Siegel was a US physicist. He was a professor of Physics at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor, MI, and the founder of Conductron Corporation, a high tech producer of electronic equipment which was absorbed by McDonnell Douglas Corporation; KMS Industries and KMS Fusion...
, in Ann Arbor, Michigan
Michigan
Michigan is a U.S. state located in the Great Lakes Region of the United States of America. The name Michigan is the French form of the Ojibwa word mishigamaa, meaning "large water" or "large lake"....
, it was later moved to Los Alamos in the early 1990s to be used in ICF
Inertial confinement fusion
Inertial confinement fusion is a process where nuclear fusion reactions are initiated by heating and compressing a fuel target, typically in the form of a pellet that most often contains a mixture of deuterium and tritium....
and materials research. The Trident Laser Facility has been opened up to external users via the Trident National User Program and potential users can now submit proposals for laser time.
The Trident Laser consists of three main laser chains (A,B, and C) of neodymium glass amplifiers (or Nd:glass), two are identical longpulse beams lines, A&B, and a third beamline, C, that can be operated either in longpulse or in chirped pulse amplification
Chirped pulse amplification
Chirped pulse amplification is a technique for amplifying an ultrashort laser pulse up to the petawatt level with the laser pulse being stretched out temporally and spectrally prior to amplification...
(CPA) shortpulse mode.
Longpulse beams A and B, are laser chains capable of delivering up to ~500 J at 1054 nm, which are frequency doubled to 527 nm and ~200 J depending on pulse duration; the pulse duration can be varied from 100 ps to 1 µs, and is a unique capability of any large laser in the US (and possibly the world). The third laser chain, beamline C, can produce up to ~200 J at 1054 nm, or can be frequency doubled to 527 nm at ~100 J in the longpulse mode with the same pulse duration variability as beams A and B; or can be use in the recently (June 2007) completed Trident enhancement configuration allowing the ~200 J beam to be compressed via CPA to ~600 fs and ~100 J, producing powers on the scale of a quarter petawatt(~200 TW). A 100 mJ 500 fs probe beamline is also available.
The 200TW shortpulse ultra high-intensity laser system is currently a world record holder in ion acceleration energy, producing protons at 58.5 MeV, beating the record of the NOVA Petawatt laser back in 1999. Trident delivers Petawatt performance at a fifth of the power. The 200TW or C beam is capable of focusing down to less than 10 micrometers in diameter to reach laser field intensities (irradiance) of ~2x1020 W/cm², producing protons over 50 MeV as well as high quaility, high energy xrays. The interaction can be diagnosed with a Backscatter Focal Diagnostics similar to a Full Aperture Back-scatter (FABS) diagnostic at the National Ignition Facility
National Ignition Facility
The National Ignition Facility, or NIF is a large, laser-based inertial confinement fusion research device located at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in Livermore, California. NIF uses powerful lasers to heat and compress a small amount of hydrogen fuel to the point where nuclear fusion...
. A new front-end for the laser employs a 2nd order cleaning technique, dubbed SPOPA (for Short-Pulse Optical Parametric Amplification) cleaning, which reduces the contrast to better than 10-9 ASE intensity ratio, making it the cleanest ultra high-intensity high-power laser in the world.
The laser is currently being used for Fast Ignition ICF research, warm dense matter experiments, materials dynamics studies, and laser-matter interaction research, including particle acceleration, x-ray backlighting and laser-plasma instabilities (LPI).
For more information see the Trident User Facility Website: Trident User Facility, Los Alamos National Laboratory
Los Alamos National Laboratory
Los Alamos National Laboratory is a United States Department of Energy national laboratory, managed and operated by Los Alamos National Security , located in Los Alamos, New Mexico...
.