Alignment of the Eight Beams Octal 82 Laser

摘要

The OCTAL 82 laser facility is a Neodymium glass laser system, recently put in operation at Limeil, France. It is designed to create high energy light beams during very short periods of time in the nanosecond range and shorter, in order to irradiate and compress microscopic fusion targets to extremely high densities. The alignment is undertaken in two stages, each using a telescope with vidicon detectors connected to a real time computer named ''CENTROIDE'' which displays the digitized image on a color TV screen. First, a refracting telescope is used to inject the front-end beam into the preamplifier assembly and to align all its optical components. Second, a reflecting telescope and ten insertable mirrors are used to align the eight individual power chains and the beam splitter arrays. The alignment method works with a manually controlled closed loop which is the most flexible approach that can meet our dual objectives of reliability and accuracy. The over all alignment of OCTAL 82 was first completed in may 1982 and since that time only minor routine realignments have been made, thereby proving the feasibility of the method. (Atomindex citation 14:789484)