SBIR-STTR Award

Inertial confinement fusion (ICF) offers to tap almost unlimited sources of inexpensive energy. This new energy source would free the U.S. from the dependence on hydrocarbon fuels, the use of which produces green-house gases (GHG). The proposed EPDL laser driver would greatly advance the ICF maturity and its transition to commercial IFE for generation of electricity. Availability of low-cost and non-polluting electric power would revolutionize transportation and manufacturing sectors, thus boosting the overall economy. Reduced dependence on hydrocarbon fuels would also reduce to size overstated importance of hydrocarbon-producing countries, thus, improving geopolitical balance. The proposed technology also offers to advance laser acceleration of nuclear particles, thus replacing the traditional mammoth-size and costly accelerator research facilities with room-size devices. Compactness and relative simplicity of laser accelerators promises to greatly reduce the cost and timelines of high-energy research, and advance new scientific discoveries. As particle research could become affordable for universities or even commercial laboratories, the U.S. would be able to maintain leadership. In Phase I, Aqwest will develop a concept for a liquid-cooled laser driver module based on Aqwest?s edge pumped disk laser (EPDL) technology for operation at high-pulse energy and high-pulse repetition rate. Cooling by liquid will accommodate increased heat load in the high-gain disks. The project will combine and scale-up EPDL technologies that Aqwest developed in previous work for the DOE and the US Army. In Phase II, we will develop the module hardware and test it to deliver an energetic laser beam.The proposed project would greatly advance the realization of the inertial confinement fusion and its transition to commercial inertial fusion energy by using Aqwet?s innovative EPDL while leveraging prior and present Department of Defense investment. In commercial applications, EPDL offers to supplant the German-made thin disk laser, which has been the dominant technology for laser material processing for the last 10 years.

Inertial confinement fusion (ICF) offers to tap almost unlimited sources of inexpensive energy. This new energy source would free the U.S. from the dependence on hydrocarbon fuels, the use of which produces green-house gases (GHG). The proposed laser driver would greatly advance the ICF maturity and its transition to commercial IFE for generation of electricity by circumventing the engineering challenges to the conventional hot spot ignition (HSI). Availability of low-cost and non-polluting electric power would revolutionize transportation and manufacturing sectors, thus boosting the overall economy. Reduced dependence on hydrocarbon fuels would also reduce to size overstated importance of hydrocarbon-producing countries, thus, improving geopolitical balance. The proposed technology also offers to advance laser acceleration of nuclear particles, thus replacing the traditional mammoth-size and costly accelerator research facilities with room-size devices. Compactness and relative simplicity of laser accelerators promises to greatly reduce the cost and timelines of high-energy research, and advance new scientific discoveries. As particle research could become affordable for universities or even commercial laboratories, the U.S. would be able to maintain leadership. In Phase I, Aqwest investigated a compact liquid-cooled laser gain module as a building block for a HPE / HRR laser for the generation and heating of HEDP. The innovative gain module leverages and further extends Aqwest's edge- pumped disk laser (EPDL) technology, which enables efficient amplification of high-energy pulses with high-peak power at high repletion rate, high efficiency, and with near-diffraction-limited beam quality (BQ). In particular, we developed a preliminary design for the compact EPDL amplifier module offering a common architecture customizable for specialty applications. In Phase II, we will develop and demonstrate full-scale HPE / HRR laser gain module(s) based on the Phase I “common architecture” designs, construct advanced heat sink for removal of waste heat, and generate a design for multi-module amplifier. This work will validate the compact EPDL-based liquid-cooled gain module as a building block for a HPE / HRR laser for the generation and heating of HEDP. The proposed project would greatly advance research in planetary astrophysics, geophysics, materials science, medicine, ICF, and defense. In commercial applications, EPDL offers to supplant the German-made thin disk laser, which has been the dominant technology for laser material processing for the last 15 years.