Temporal pulse-shaping for laser-fusion experiments using a cavity-dumped O-switched oscillator

For the purpose of generating temporally shaped laser pulses in the nanosecond domain a cavity-dumped Q-switched oscillator has been constructed. It has proven to be versatile, efficient, reliable, and stable. Its performance has been demonstrated through the generation of flat-topped step pulses with rise-times of 0.2 ns and controllable duration of between 1 and 4 ns, and through the generation of double-step (Nuckolls type) pulses. Peak powers of 0.3 MW in TEM₀₀, 1 mrad divergence pulses are routinely obtained. With one additional isolated stage 'slaved' to the cavity-dump Pockels cell, a prepulse energy contrast of 7*10⁵ is achieved. Output energy variation is +or-7%.