OVERVIEW OF THE NIKE KRF LASER PROGRAM

Nike is a large angularly multiplexed Krypton-Fluoride (KrF) laser und er development at the Naval Research Laboratory. It is designed to exp lore 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 targe t. Spatially and temporally incoherent light will be used to reduce th e ablation pressure nonuniformities to less than 2% in the target foca l plane. The Nike laser consists of a commercial oscillator/amplifier front end, an array of gas discharge amplifiers, two electron beam pum ped 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 de code the beam. Approximately 90% of the system is operational and curr ently undergoing tests: the system is complete through the 20 cm ampli fier, the 60 cm amplifier has completed all the necessary electron bea m/pulsed power tests, and is currently being developed into a laser am plifier, and most of the optics have been installed. It is anticipated that Nike will be fully operational in the fall of 1994.