Abstract. As a first step of a driver development for the inertial fusion energy, we are developing a laser-diode-pumped zig-zag Nd:glass slab laser amplifier system HALNA 10 (High Average-power Laser for Nuclear-fusion Application) which can generate an output of 10 J per pulse at 1053 nm in 10 Hz operation. The water-cooled zig-zag Nd:glass slab is pumped from both sides by 803-nm AlGaAs laser-diode(LD) module; each LD module has an emitting area of 420 mm x 10 mm and two LD modules generated in total 218 (max.) kW peak power with 2.6kW/cm2 peak intensity at 10 Hz repetition rate. We have obtained in a preliminary experiment a 8.5 J output energy at 0.5 Hz with beam quality of 2 times diffraction limited far-field pattern, which nearly confirmed our conceptual design.
IAEA 2001