The Janus laser was a (then considered high power) two beam

infrared Infrared (IR), sometimes called infrared light, is electromagnetic radiation (EMR) with wavelengths longer than those of visible light. It is therefore invisible to the human eye. IR is generally understood to encompass wavelengths from around ...

neodymium Neodymium is a chemical element with the symbol Nd and atomic number 60. It is the fourth member of the lanthanide series and is considered to be one of the rare-earth metals. It is a hard, slightly malleable, silvery metal that quickly tarnishe ...

doped silica

glass Glass is a non-crystalline, often transparent, amorphous solid that has widespread practical, technological, and decorative use in, for example, window panes, tableware, and optics. Glass is most often formed by rapid cooling ( quenching ...

laser A laser is a device that emits light through a process of optical amplification based on the stimulated emission of electromagnetic radiation. The word "laser" is an acronym for "light amplification by stimulated emission of radiation". The fi ...

built at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in 1974 for the study of

inertial confinement fusion Inertial confinement fusion (ICF) is a fusion energy process that initiates nuclear fusion reactions by compressing and heating targets filled with thermonuclear fuel. In modern machines, the targets are small spherical pellets about the size of ...

. Janus was built using about 100 pounds of Nd:glass laser material. Initially, Janus was only capable of producing laser pulses of about 10 joules of energy at a power of 0.5TW. It was the first laser at Livermore to generate thermonuclear fusion via the irradiation of DT gas filled glass ("exploding pusher") targets.

External links

* https://web.archive.org/web/20041109063036/http://www.llnl.gov/50science/lasers.html * http://www.osti.gov/bridge/servlets/purl/16710-UOC0xx/native/16710.pdf * http://adsabs.harvard.edu/cgi-bin/nph-bib_query?bibcode=1978SPIE..121..111G&db_key=PHY&data_type=HTML&format=&high=44fac4eeaa10084 * https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/1072443 Inertial confinement fusion research lasers {{plasma-stub

See also

External links