Laser diagnostics of the plasma in the S-300 pulsed power generator

The second harmonic (SH) YAG:Nd laser diagnostic setup has been described. Pulses of the electro-optic Q-switch TEM00 YAG:Nd master oscillator have been compressed in CCl4 cell in the course of SBS. After amplification, the Stokes pulse passed a train of the SH generators with nonlinear crystals, deflectors of the SH beams, optic delay lines for SH beams and YAG:Nd amplifiers. Thus laser diagnostic setup produced five beams with the wavelength of 532 nm, energy of 3-5 mJ, pulse duration of 0.3ns and intervals between the pulses 10ns. Series of shadow photographs of plasmas of different wire arrays have been obtained. Causes of image formation have been discussed. The magnitude of the plasma density has been estimated. Velocities of the imploding plasma have been measured.© (2005) COPYRIGHT SPIE--The International Society for Optical Engineering. Downloading of the abstract is permitted for personal use only.