Development of the Petawatt Laser and its Application to Inertial Confinement Fusion

Conventional inertial confinement fusion (ICF relies on the formation of a hot central core within the dense fuel to spark ignition. This condition is achieved by rapid, highly symmetric, spherical implosion of the capsule driven by temporally-shaped multi-nanosecond pulses delivered either directly by a multitude of laser beams or indirectly by x-rays. Due to the extreme requirements on symmetry and the necessity to achieve both high temperature and density in the implosion, conventional ICF requires substantial energy from the laser to ignite the capsule.