A summary of explorations into the use of green light for high-gain, high-yield experiments on the National Ignition Facility

For several years we have been exploring the possibility of using green (2ω) light for indirect drive ignition on National Ignition Facility (NIF). This paper is a comprehensive review of our progress in this investigation and was the subject of a Teller lecture when one of the authors (LJS) was honoured with the Edward Teller Medal at the IFSA03 conference on September 12th, 2003, at Monterey, CA. While much of the work presented here has been previously published (Suter L.J. et al 2004 Phys. Plasmas 11 2738) and is included for completeness of the review, this paper also includes new research examining the possibility of higher temperature (300 eV) ignition hohlraums driven by green light (section 7).