Orchestrating the World's Most Powerful Laser

摘要

When completed, the National Ignition Facility (NIF) will be, by far, the world's largest and most energetic-laser and a major international scientific resource. Designed to study the physics of matter at extreme densities, pressures, and temperatures, NIF will use 192 laser beams to compress fusion targets to conditions required for. thermonuclear ignition and burn. In the process, more energy will be liberated than is used to initiate the fusion reactions. (See the box on p. 6.). Every NIF experimental shot requires the coordination of complex laser equipment. In the process, 60,000 control points of electronic, optical, and mechanical devices—such as motorized mirrors and lenses, energy and power sensors, video cameras, laser amplifiers, pulse power, and diagnostic instruments—must be monitored and controlled. The precise orchestration of these parts will, result in the propagation of 192 separate nanosecond-long bursts of light over a 1-kilometer path length. These 192 beams must arrive within 30 picoseconds of each other at the center of a target chamber 10 meters in diameter, and they must strike within 50 micrometers of their assigned spot on a target measuring less than 1 centimeter long.