--- Edmund Storms wrote: > When evaluating the laser result, you need to take into account that it does not work unless the cathode is coated with gold. Consequently, the effect depends on how deep the laser energy goes.
If gold is critical to this, then I would comment that perhaps the depth (light penetration) is negligible; and moreover- perhaps it is even immaterial! Why? In a word - Nova... or maybe I should say: Nova + holraum. At LLNL the Nova ICF reactor has (had) UV laser beams irradiating a gold "holraum", a hollow gold sphere. I haven't keep up with this recently, so it may be in mothballs by now. I am pretty sure - but not positive that they tried many other metals and alloys and found gold superior in upshifting coherent laser light into very energetic x-rays. Maybe the x-rays from gold are coherent as well. One would suspect that a denser metal like Osmium would work better, but perhaps there is something intrinsic to gold when coherent radiation is involved? It would be a real hoot if this Nova ICF implosion technique could be approximated -- and on a small scale very cheaply. The revenge of P&F ? aka poetic justice ... LLNL is probably the most egregious big-spender in all of physics... and with the lowest ROI (return on investment) to the taxpayer. Jones
