But *generally* the ‘magic’ of short wavelengths lies in increased penetration/plasma density ratios...

That may be true, but wavelengths that you mention are currently impossible to make at high power- and likely will be impossible far a long time- keep in mind that this is coming from someone that has come to learn that conservative expectations on laser tech is usually wrong ... I am not being pessimistic just stating the current reality as I know it...

R.L., *PLEASE* don't interpret anything said here as condescension! You are clearly possessed of greater theoretical and practical knowledge, of the subject at hand, than I...

The intent of my post was to salute one 'mile post' (attainment of extreme power-density) while looking ahead to another (inducement of ‘gainful’ ICF) - without intent to *necessarily* 'wed' the two...

The intent of my post was to laud the extremes we have come to - 10^22 W/cm^2, that is mind boggling- personally I think it will teach us a lot, but I doubt it will be used for ICF anytime soon...

and no I didnt take your post as condescention... This is a subject I do know, I studied it as a grad student, and it became a useful subject of study in my first job... I do NOT claim to be an expert in it at all... But I can evaluate it with some knowledge...

I'm curious as to your experiments at 13 nanometers? When you say that the beam “wasn’t coherent”, are you referring to discontinuities of phase? Spectral impurity? 'Non-collimatability'? Or, inasmuch as these qualities are interdependent, all of the above??? --- If I understand you correctly, the energy produced was akin to the emissions one might expect of an old Coolidge tube operated at low anode EMF (i.e. merely a soft 'x-ray' source)? ;-)

I am *genuinely* curious!!! :-)

We were trying to use 13.6 nm light to do lithography to make computer chips- we proved it works and the chip companies paid over a quarter billion just to our project- it works, and if implemented will make chips denser and faster so much that it pushes the limit of what you can do with silicon... We focussed a 1.5 kw laser into a jet of liquid xenon, it heated to a few hundred thousand degrees and radiated some light at 13.6 nm- the light was collected and used for doing lithography... we made patterns on wafers that were impossible before....

While I have followed the evolution of short wavelength LASERs from ‘Novette’ through ‘Nova’ and am fascinated by the work (and vision) of the NIF project - I, embarrassingly, have few solid references/resources - Perhaps you could recommend websites and/or direct me to publications?

Lasers have been progreessing to shorter wavelengths, however high power is not possible at those wave lengths .. give us a few decades and maybe it will be done.....

as for publications give me a few days......there are many but i do not have access to them right now......(3 day weekend etc....)

Hope you found this helpful....