The Trident 250TW Short-Pulse Laser Upgrade at LANL: System and Initial Results
ORAL
Abstract
The Trident laser-facility at Los Alamos has served for more than 20 years as an important tool in ICF and Material Dynamics research [1,2,3] An energy / power upgrade of the short pulse beam line to 150J / 250 TW and a new short pulse front end has been installed. Moreover, a third target area dedicated to combined short pulse / long pulse experiments is being built. The combination of this powerful new short-pulse beam line with the two flexible long pulse beams and a total of three different target areas, makes Trident a highly flexible and versatile research tool for high energy density laboratory plasma research. In this presentation, the upgraded capabilities are described, and results from initial operation are summarized. \newline [1] N. K. Moncur et al., Appl. Opt. \textbf{23}, 4274 (1995) \newline [2] D. S. Montgomery et al., PRL \textbf{87}, 155001 (2001) \newline [3] Swift, Damian C., et al., Phys Rev E \textbf{69}, 036406 (2004)
*This work is sponsored by the US DOE/NNSA and the LANL LDRD program.
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