The National Ignition Facility (NIF) is the world's largest laser system. It contains a 192 beam neodymium glass laser that is designed to deliver 1.8 MJ at 500 TW at 351 nm in order to achieve energy gain (ignition) in a deuterium-tritium nuclear fusion target. To meet this goal, laser design criteria include the ability to generate pulses of up to 1.8 MJ total energy, with peak power of 500 TW and temporal pulse shapes spanning 2 orders of magnitude at the third harmonic (351 nm or 3omega) of the laser wavelength. The focal-spot fluence distribution of these pulses is carefully controlled, through a combination of special optics in the 1omega (1053 nm) portion of the laser (continuous phase plates), smoothing by spectral dispersion, and the overlapping of multiple beams with orthogonal polarization (polarization smoothing). We report performance qualification tests of the first eight beams of the NIF laser. Measurements are reported at both 1omega and 3omega, both with and without focal-spot conditioning. When scaled to full 192 beam operation, these results demonstrate, to the best of our knowledge for the first time, that the NIF will meet its laser performance design criteria, and that the NIF can simultaneously meet the temporal pulse shaping, focal-spot conditioning, and peak power requirements for two candidate indirect drive ignition designs.

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An enclosing "box" calorimeter has been used to measure the polarization and angular dependence of 1.06-pm laser-light absorption under experimental conditions approximating those assumed by Estabrook, Valeo, and Kruer in their simulations; i.e., -10'~W /cm plane waves incident on a planar plasma. A clea~resonance absorption'maximum was observed for pbut not for s-polarized incident radiation as predicted.

Efficient frequency tripling of high-fluence, narrow-band laser pulses is routinely accomplished with a doubling crystal and a sum-frequency mixer. The addition of a second mixer can dramatically improve conversion efficiencies for the large bandwidths of interest for inertial confinement fusion. Designs that involve two doublers similarly offer a higher dynamic range of conversion efficiency versus intensity than the usual two-crystal design.

Installation and commissioning of the first of forty-eight Final Optics Assemblies on the National Ignition Facility was completed this past year. This activity culminated in the delivery of first light to a target. The final optics design is described and selected results from first-article commissioning and performance tests are presented.

A high-energy, ultraviolet Thomson scattering probe beam has been implemented on the Omega laser facility at the University of Rochester. The new probe operates at a wavelength of 264 nm, with a maximum energy of 260 J in a pulse length of 1 ns. The probe is focused with an F/6.7 lens to a minimum focal spot of 40 μm within a pointing tolerance of <50 μm. Data obtained from this probe beam have provided new diagnostic information on plasmas relevant for inertial confinement fusion and atomic physics studies.