StarDriver: A Flexible Laser Driver for Inertial Confinement Fusion and High Energy Density Physics.

We propose a novel method to minimize laser-plasma instabilities and improve laser-plasma coupling by the use of multi-beam laser architecture with a large system frequency bandwidth and many beamlets per unit solid angle. The StarDriver™, laser driver is constructed from 10 to 10 individual lasers, each delivering nominally 100 J in pulses of ~3-30 ns at a nominal wavelength of ~355 nm with better than 3-5 diffraction-limited performance. The beamlets are individually relatively narrowband to facilitate maximum laser performance, but the ensemble of beamlets span a wide frequency range. Currently available laser media enable Δω/ω ~ 2 % at 355 nm with the possibility of system bandwidths approaching 10 % in the future. The many beamlets of StarDriver™ provide optimal asymptotic smoothing for hydrodynamic instabilities (0-1 %), innovative focusing strategies including zooming, and the large bandwidth enables extremely rapid hydrodynamic smoothing times ~30 fs. The distribution of frequencies among the beamlets allows flexibility for fine control of the seeding of the Rayleigh-Taylor instability. The ultra-broad bandwidth combined with the large total k-spectrum of the laser drive in the plasma corona may enable complete suppression of the most problematic laser-plasma instabilities such as stimulated Brillouin backscatter, stimulated Raman scatter, cross-beam energy transfer, and the two plasmon decay instability. StarDriver™ offers potentially superior flexibility in laser drivers for inertial confinement fusion, enabling almost arbitrary sequencing of wavelength, polarization, focus, and fine control of the spatio-temporal properties of the drive in the corona. The highly modular strategy of StarDriver™ should enable an attractive development pathway as well as maximizing overall system efficiency. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]