USING LASERS IN NUCLEAR EFFECTS SIMULATIONS - FEASIBILITY STUDY

JAYCOR HAS PERFORMED PRELIMINARY IR&D EXPERIMENTS AND NUMERICAL SIMULATION OF THE INTERACTION OF LASERS WITH SOLID TARGETS. THE RESULTS SUGGEST THAT A CERTAIN CLASS OF LASERS MAY BE USEFUL IN SIMULATING AT LEAST TWO IMPORTANT NUCLEAR WEAPON EFFECTS: (1) THE SCALED ELECTROMAGNETIC RESPONSE OF A CONDUCTING BODY, AND (2) THE SOFT ELECTRON EMISSION SPECTRUM. THIS PROGRAM IS A JOINT EXPERIMENTALAND THEORETICAL EFFORT TO DETERMINE THE FEASIBILITY OF USING LASERS FOR NUCLEAR WEAPON SIMULATIONS, TO GENERATE APPROPRIATE DATA ON LASER EFFECTS, AND TO COMPARE THE LASER EFFECTS DATA WITH CORRESPONDING NUCLEAR EFFECTS DATA.