OVERVIEW OF THE NIKE KRF LASER PROGRAM

Nike is a large angularly multiplexed Krypton-Fluoride (KrF) laser under development at the Naval Research Laboratory. It is designed to explore the technical and physics issues of direct drive laser fusion.(1) When completed, Nike will deliver 2-3 kJ of 248 nm light in a 4 nsec pulse with intensities exceeding 2 x 10 W-14/cm(2) onto a planar target. Spatially and temporally incoherent light will be used to reduce the ablation pressure nonuniformities to less than 2% in the target focal plane. The Nike laser consists of a commercial oscillator/amplifier front end, an array of gas discharge amplifiers, two electron beam pumped amplifiers (one with a 20 x 20 cm(2) aperture, the other with a 60 x 60 cm(2) aperture) and the optics required to relay, encode, and decode the beam. Approximately 90% of the system is operational and currently undergoing tests: the system is complete through the 20 cm amplifier, the 60 cm amplifier has completed all the necessary electron beam/pulsed power tests, and is currently being developed into a laser amplifier, and most of the optics have been installed. It is anticipated that Nike will be fully operational in the fall of 1994.