The national ignition facility high-energy ultraviolet laser system

Abstract

The National Ignition Facility (NIF), currently under construction at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, is a stadium-sized facility containing a 192-beam, 1 .&Megajoule, 500-Terawatt, ultraviolet laser system together with a 10-meter diameter target chamber with room for nearly 100 experimental diagnostics. When completed, NIF will be the world's largest and most energetic laser experimental system, providing an international center to study inertial confinement fusion and the physics of matter at extreme energy densities and pressures. NIF's 192 energetic laser beams will compress fusion targets to conditions required for thermonuclear bum, liberating more energy than required to initiate the fusion reactions. Other NIF experiments will allow the study of physical processes at temperatures approaching lo8 K and 10" Bar, conditions that exist naturally only in the interior of stars, planets and in nuclear weapons. NIF is now entering the first phases of its laser commissioning program. The first four beams of the NIF laser system have generated 106 kilojoules of infrared light and over 10 kl at the third harmonic (351 nm). NIF's target experimental systems are also being installed in preparation for experiments to begin in late 2003. This paper provides a detailed look the NIF laser systems, the significant laser and optical systems breakthroughs that were developed, the results of recent laser commissioning shots, and plans for commissioning diagnostics for experiments on NIF.

Rankings and Classifications in Higher Education: A European Perspective

“…The United Kingdom, which abolished its binary system in the early 1990s, is now looking to re-establish more diversity with the above-mentioned aim of thereby enhancing participation. As in other countries which have a unitary system, such as Australia, the lack of differentiation between institutions, with resulting mission convergence and institutional isomorphism, is seen as a justification for new reforms (Scott, 2004;Moses, 2004). In the case of the UK this is leading to a new search for effective forms of diversity, including a renewed focus on the teaching mission of higher education institutions, as is for example expressed in the UK White Paper on Higher Education (DfES, 2004).…”