Solid state laser driver for an ICF reactor

A conceptual design is presented of the main power amplifier of a multi-beamline, multi-megawatt solid state ICF reactor driver. Simultaneous achievement of useful beam quality and high average power is achieved by a proper choice of amplifier geometry. An amplifier beamline consists of a sequence of face-pumped rectangular slab gain elements, oriented at the Brewster angle relative to the beamline axis, and cooled on their large faces by helium gas that is flowing subsonically. The infrared amplifier output radiation is shifted to an appropriately short wavelength (<500 nm) using nonlinear crystals that are also gas cooled. We project an overall driver efficiency >10% (including all flow cooling input power) when the amplifiers are pumped by efficient high-power AlGaAs semiconductor laser diode arrays. 11 refs., 3 figs., 7 tabs