FIGURE 4.10 Measurements in space and time of the amplitudes of both electron plasma and ion sound waves in a laser-irradiated plasma. SOURCE: Reprinted, with permission, from C.Labaune, H.A.Baldis, N.Renard, E.Schifano, and A.Michard, 1997, “Interplay Between Ion Acoustic Waves and Electron Plasma Waves Associated with Stimulated Brillouin and Raman Scattering,” Phys. Plasmas, 4:423–427, copyright 1997 by the American Institute of Physics.

enabled valuable laser experiments on topics ranging from basic plasma and atomic physics to implosion physics. Another national facility providing a unique resource, an ultrasmooth few-kilojoule laser, is NIKE, at the Naval Research Laboratory. It enables instability studies to be done without worrying about beam seeding of specific modes.

By far the most energetic laser for high energy density physics will be the NIF, described in the Chapter 3. The first quad of beams is anticipated to be available for experiments in fiscal year (FY) 2003, and the entire system is projected for comple-