The National Ignition Campaign (NIC): Results and future plans

The 192-beam National Ignition Facility (NIF), a football-stadium sized laser at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL) in Livermore, CA, is now fully operational. With planned peak energy of 1.8 MJ in the ultraviolet, NIF will be approximately fifty times more energetic than any previous inertial confinement fusion (ICF) laser system. NIF has conducted 192-beam ICF implosion experiments with energies as high as 1.2 MJ, and has also demonstrated the unprecedented energy and pulse shaping control required for ignition experiments.