The National Ignition Facility: Ushering in a new age for high energy density science

TLDR

The National Ignition Facility (NIF) is the world's most powerful laser, enabling high‑energy‑density experiments. NIF’s extreme temperatures and densities will enable inertial confinement fusion, stockpile stewardship, and a broad range of experiments in astrophysics, plasma physics, and planetary science. NIF was completed in March 2009 and is the highest‑energy laser ever built. © 2008 Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory.

Abstract

The National Ignition Facility (NIF) [E. I. Moses, J. Phys. : Conf. Ser. 112, 012003 (2008); https://lasers.llnl.gov/], completed in March 2009, is the highest energy laser ever constructed. The high temperatures and densities achievable at NIF will enable a number of experiments in inertial confinement fusion and stockpile stewardship, as well as access to new regimes in a variety of experiments relevant to x-ray astronomy, laser-plasma interactions, hydrodynamic instabilities, nuclear astrophysics, and planetary science. The experiments will impact research on black holes and other accreting objects, the understanding of stellar evolution and explosions, nuclear reactions in dense plasmas relevant to stellar nucleosynthesis, properties of warm dense matter in planetary interiors, molecular cloud dynamics and star formation, and fusion energy generation.