Trident laser

The Trident Laser is a sub-Petawatt class solid-state laser facility located at Los Alamos National Laboratory ( [http://www.lanl.gov LANL website] ), in Los Alamos, New Mexico, originally built in the late 1980s for Inertial confinement fusion (ICF) research by KMS Fusion, founded by Kip Siegel, in Ann Arbor, Michigan, it was moved to Los Alamos in the early 1990s ["Trident: a versatile high-power Nd:glass laserfacility for inertial confinement fusion experiments," N. K. Moncur, R. P. Johnson, R. G. Watt, and R. B. Gibson, "Applied Optics" 34 p.4274 (1995)] . The Trident Laser has been opened up to external users via the [http://trident.lanl.gov Trident National User Program] and potential users can now [http://trident.lanl.gov/Resources.shtml submit proposals] for laser time.

The [http://trident.lanl.gov/About.shtml Trident Laser] consists of three main laser chains ("A","B", and "C") of neodymium glass amplifiers (or Nd:glass), two are identical longpulse beams lines, "A"&"B", and a third beamline, "C", that can be operated either in longpulse or in chirped pulse amplification (CPA) shortpulse mode [ [http://www.osti.gov/energycitations/servlets/purl/10120305-Fj6UZG/webviewable/10120305.PDF Trident as an Ultrahigh Irradiance Laser] , R.P Johnson "et. al", LA-UR-9541 (1995), Los Alamos National Laboratory] . Longpulse beams "A" and "B", are laser chains capable of delivering up to ~500 J at 1054 nm, which are frequency doubled to 527 nm and ~200 J depending on pulse duration; the pulse duration can be varied from 100 ps to 1 µs, and is a unique capability of any large laser in the US (and possibly the world). The third laser chain, beamline "C", can produce up to ~200 J at 1054 nm, or can be frequency doubled to 527 nm at ~100 J in the longpulse mode with the same pulse duration variability as beams "A" and "B"; or can be use in the recently (June 2007) completed Trident enhancement configuration allowing the ~200 J beam to be compressed via CPA to ~600 fs and ~120 J, producing powers on the scale of a quarter Petawatt(~250 TW).

The shortpulse system is capable of focusing the "C" beam down to less than 10 micrometres in diameter to reach ultrahigh intensities of ~2x10²⁰ W/cm².The laser is currently being used for Fast Ignition ICF research, materials dynamics studies, and laser-matter instability studies, including particle acceleration, x-ray backlighting and laser-plasma instabilities.

For more information see the Trident User Facility Website: [http://trident.lanl.gov Trident User Facility] , Los Alamos National Laboratory.

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