The petawatt laser and its application to inertial confinement fusion

Summary form only given. A project to develop a 1000 TW (petawatt) class laser began in 1992 in order to provide the capability to examine the fast ignitor concept for inertial confinement fusion (ICF). The laser was designed to produce 1 kilojoule pulses with a duration less than 500 fsec and be focusable to a high irradiance. Near-diffraction-limited beams require large-scale pulse compression and sophisticated adaptive optics. Metallic gratings are capable of compressing near 1 kT pulses.