The NIKE 60 cm ELECTRON BEAM-PUMPED KrF AMPLIFIER

Abstract : NIKE is a large angularly multiplexed KrF laser system under development at the Naval Research Laboratory. NIKE is designed to deliver 2-3 kJ in a 3-4 nsec pulse onto a planar target and is designed to explore the technical and physics issues of direct drive laser fusion. One of the primary goals of the NIKE laser is to achieve ablation pressure nonuniformities of less than 2% in the target focal plane using lSI beam smoothing. These uniformities should be comparable to those required for direct drive of high gain targets.