The Trident Laser is a high power, sub-petawatt class, solid-state laser facility located at Los Alamos National Laboratory, in Los Alamos, New Mexico, originally built in the late 1980s for Inertial confinement fusion research by KMS Fusion, founded by Kip Siegel, in Ann Arbor, Michigan, it was later moved to Los Alamos in the early 1990s to be used in ICF and materials research. The system is now being decommissioned with final laser experiments being completed February 2017. The consists of three main laser chains of neodymium glass amplifiers, two are identical longpulse beams lines, A&B, and a third beamline, C, that can be operated either in longpulse or in chirped pulse amplification shortpulse mode. Longpulse beams A and B, are laser chains capable of delivering up to ~500 J at 1054 nm, which are frequency doubled to 527 nm and ~200 J depending on pulse duration; the pulse duration can be varied from 100 ps to 1 µs, and is a unique capability of any large laser in the US. The third laser chain, beamline C, can produce up to ~200 J at 1054 nm, or can be frequency doubled to 527 nm at ~100 J in the longpulse mode with the same pulse duration variability as beams A and B; or can be use in the recently completed Trident enhancement configuration allowing the ~200 J beam to be compressed via CPA to ~600 fs and ~100 J, producing powers on the scale of a quarter petawatt with a host of laser and plasma diagnostics. A 100 mJ 500 fs probe beamline is also available. The 200TW shortpulse ultra high-intensity laser system is currently a world record holder in ion acceleration energy with Target Normal Sheath Acceleration mechanism, producing protons at 58.5 MeV from a flat-foil, beating the record of the NOVA Petawatt laser back in 1999; and 67.5 MeV protons from micro-cone targets. Trident delivers Petawatt performance at a fifth of the power. The 200TW or C beam is capable of focusing down to less than 10 micrometers in diameter to reach laser field intensities of ~2x1020 W/cm², producing protons over 50 MeV as well as high quality, high energy xrays. The interaction can be diagnosed with a Backscatter Focal Diagnostics similar to a Full Aperture Back-scatter diagnostic at the National Ignition Facility. A new front-end for the laser employs a 2nd order cleaning technique, dubbed SPOPA cleaning, which reduces the contrast to better than 10−9 ASE intensity ratio, making it one of the cleanest ultra high-intensity high-power laser in the world. The laser is currently being used for Fast Ignition ICF research, warm dense matter experiments, materials dynamics studies, and laser-matter interaction research, including particle acceleration, x-ray backlighting and laser-plasma instabilities. For more information see the Trident User Facility Website: , Los Alamos National Laboratory, see the references below and these articles using the laser:
