Abstract

The National Ignition Facility at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory is a 1.8 MJ, 192 beam laser designed to produce the conditions of temperature and density in compressed deuterium-tritium ice which theory predicted would produce thermonuclear ignition. All of the exquisite technical requirements of the laser and the targets have been met. A comprehensive set of diagnostics has been installed with major contributions from the eight Laboratories and Universities and four countries.

© 2013 Optical Society of America