Regenerative Amplifier for the Omega Laser System

LLE Review, Volume 76 219 The 60-beam OMEGA Nd:glass laser is a direct-drive inertial confinement fusion (ICF) laser facility capable of achieving 30-kJ UV energy with an arbitrary temporal pulse shape predetermined by the target design. The initial low-energy, temporally shaped pulse is generated by the pulse-shaping system1 (similar to a design developed at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory2), followed by multistage amplification with splitting, resulting in 60 laser beams with 1-kJ IR energy per beam. At the first amplification stage a negative-feedbackcontrolled, Nd:YLF regenerative amplifier (regen) is used. In this regen, the shaped pulse is amplified up to nine orders of magnitude to the submillijoule level.