The national ignition facility performance status

The National Ignition Facility (NIF) laser has been designed to support high energy density science, including the demonstration of fusion ignition through Inertial Confinement. NIF operated a single 'quad' of 4 beams from December 2002 through October 2004 in order to gain laser operations experience, support target experiments, and demonstrate laser performance consistent with NIF's design requirement. During this two-year period, over 400 Main Laser shots were delivered at 1ω to calorimeters for diagnostic calibration purposes, at 3ω to the Target Chamber, and at 1ω, 2ω, and 3ω to the precision diagnostic system (PDS). The PDS includes its own independent single beam transport system, NIF design frequency conversion hardware and optics, and laser sampling optics that deliver light to a broad range of laser diagnostics. Highlights of NIF laser performance will be discussed including the results of high energy 2ω and 3ω experiments, the use of multiple focal spot beam conditioning techniques, the reproducibility of laser performance on multiple shots, the generation on a single beam of a 3ω temporally shaped ignition pulse at full energy and power, and recent results on full bundle (8 beamline) performance. NIF's first quad laser performance meets or exceeds NIF's design requirements. (authors)