Development of the 1 kJ Nd:Glass Laser System for Basic Research on Quantum Engineering at KAERI

One of the purposes of high energy lasers, such as NIF, LMJ, Gekko XII and Shen-Guang III, is to investigate the principles of high energy density plasma science. The high energy density plasma produced by the high energy lasers has received vast attention due to its fundamental sciences and variety of applications; laboratory astrophysics, the acceleration of high energy electron and proton, equation of state, and the fast ignition of inertial fusion research. The photo-nuclear radiation source by a high energy laser opens a new science field of quantum engineering. The Korea Atomic Energy Research Institute (KAERI) is developing a high energy Nd:Glass laser facility for basic research on quantum engineering. KAERI laser facility (KLF) is based on the optical components of Gekko IV which was transferred from the Institute of Laser Engineering (ILE) Osaka University. The system will deliver 4 beam lines with a clear aperture of 100 mm. Each beam will be more than 250 J at the nanosecond regime. The laser system consists of an oscillator, two pre-amplifiers, four double-pass rod amplifiers and four phosphate glass disk amplifiers at the final stage. For a wide application of the system, we plan to build the laser system to be operated as one kilo-joule laser at a nano-second or 50 TW at a pico-second. Combination of a nano-second high energy laser and a pico-second laser is expected to open a new physics area of high energy density plasma. In this paper, we report current status of our project and on 400 J laser amplification experimental results