ABSTRACT
The motivation for using excimer lasers as inertial confinement fusion (ICF) drivers is based both upon their target-physics advantages and their operational characteristics. As a consequence of high fidelity amplification, excimer lasers are also able to provide the pulse-shaping flexibility required for the optimization of ICF target performance. Direct pumping by relativistic electron beams has proven to be an effective, simple, and well-developed technology for the excitation of large excimer lasers. Laser physics, relativistic electron beam excitation of the laser medium, scaling, and system architecture for mega-joule-class systems are discussed in this chapter. Historically, high-current electron guns used for the excitation of excimers were either cold-cathode diodes or thermionic diodes that achieved electron energies sufficient to excite large-aperture excimer lasers. Brillouin compression works in a similar fashion, except that the compression is achieved by stimulated Brillouin scattering.
