Laser start-up system for magnetic mirror fusion.

A CO2 laser system has been developed at the Lawrence Livermore Laboratory to provide hot start-up plasmas for magnetic mirror fusion experiments. It can irradiate a frozen ammonia pellet with a laser power density in excess of 1013 W/cm2 in a 50-nsec pulse. The system uses commercially available lasers. Optical components were fabricated both by direct machining and by standard techniques. The technologies used are directly applicable to reactor-scale systems.