In this work the construction characteristics and performances of a laser system operating with an e-beam sustained discharge are described. Operating with XeCl, the laser pulse energy is over 4 J. Details of the measurements on the system are also reported.

The experimental generation of fusion neutrons in low power and voltage deuterium RF discharges with plasma solitons is analyzed here on the basis of recently derived high internal electric fields present in non-uniform plasmas. Ion oscillation energies of 10 keV are derived and provide an explanation of the observed neutron generation rate of 105 per second.

Intense colinear laser beams ω0, k0 and ω1, k1, shone on a plasma with a frequency separation equal to the electron plasma frequency ωpe are capable of creating a large coherent longitudinal electric field EL = mcωpe/e of the order of 1 GeV/cm for a plasma density of 1018 cm-3 by the laser beat excitation of plasma oscillations. Accompanying favourable and deleterious physical effects using this process for a high energy beatwave accelerator are discussed: longitudinal dephasing, pump depletion, transverse laser diffraction, plasma turbulence effects, self-steepening, self-focusing, etc. The basic equation, the driven nonlinear Schrödinger equation, is derived to describe this system. Advanced accelerator concepts to overcome some of these problems are proposed, including various forms of the plasma fiber accelerator. An advanced laser architecture suitable for the beat-wave accelerator is suggested. Accelerator physics issues such as the luminosity are discussed. Applications of the present process to the current drive in a plasma and to the excitation of collective oscillations within nuclei are also discussed.

This paper reviews current trends in the technological design of electrical pulsed power generators of the 1 TW class. Using published data, design criteria for SIDONIX II, OWL II, KALIF and GAMBLE IIA are compared using a lumped circuit parameter. More precise predictions of machine performance are made with the GOST transmission line code. Code results show agreement to within 15% of the published experimental parameters. Electric stress limitations to power output are assessed for 1 TW level machines using empirical formulae and a finite element solution of Laplace's equation. The analysis is then used to study economic means of increasing output power so as to provide a multimodule approach to inertial confinement fusion at the 100 TW level.

We have proposed and calculated a ‘benchmark problem’ for inertial confinement fusion computer codes. The target and the input parameters for this problem together with the simulation results are presented in this paper. Users of other computer codes who are interested in a comparison between the results of different computer codes could easily run this test problem and use our results to ‘benchmark’ their code results.

A comparison of the recombination and photo-pumping approaches for producing X-ray lasing on the hydrogen-like Balmer alpha line is presented. An approximate analytic expression for the ratio of the populations of the n = 3 and 2 quantum states of the hydrogen-like ion is derived and used to delineate the plasma parameter space where Balmer alpha gain can occur in a recombining plasma. The photo-pumping intensities required to produce Balmer alpha gain for plasmas initially in the steadystate are calculated using a collisional-radiative code and compared to intensities required to produce the initial plasmas for a recombination Balmer alpha laser with comparable gain. The recombination approach becomes relatively more efficient compared to the photo-pumping approach with increasing atomic number Z of the hydrogen-like ion with an estimated break-even at approximately Z = 16.