Two strategies are currently pursued in order to reach nuclear fusion for a safe and abundant energy production : magnetic and inertial confinement. In both cases, the goal is to bring a fuel mix to a sufficient density and temperature, and maintained over a sufficient duration, to achieve nuclear fusion and produce an energy with a net gain.
Compression and Ignition Strategies
The inertial confinement fusion (ICF) consists in concentrating high energy laser beams in few nanosecond time scale on a spherical fuel target in order to adiabatically compress and heat the target, and use additional laser beams to ignite the nuclear fusion process. The ultimate goal is to produce energy in power plants, called Inertial Fusion Energy (IFE). This requires to provide laser beams with sufficient total average power and wallplug efficiency to produce significant and rewardable power production to the grid.
Even if compression and ignition strategies still vary among the experts of the community, there is a common need for kJ-class lasers, operating either at few shots/min for the exploratory research phase, and then at high repetition rate (typically 10Hz) and high wallplug efficiency for the exploitation phase.
For compression, one of the key technical aspects is the ability of shaping the temporal profile of the laser pulses in order to optimize the compression process. This feature is ensured thanks to a flexible seeder routinely used in Amplitude nanosecond lasers (Intrepid-Agilite).
For ignition, one of the strategies consists in producing protons that will penetrate the compressed target and ignite the fusion process. As mentioned in Secondary Sources section, the proton generation relies on the quality of the temporal contrast of the laser driver.
Amplitude is the leader in the field of high energy nanosecond lasers, with significant achievements over the last decade, mainly for the pumping of high intensity lasers at high repetition rate. This unique know-how is a key starting point for the fast development of solutions addressing inertial fusion challenges.
Moreover, our long experience in high contrast lasers places Amplitude at the forefront of the fusion adventure.
