Large aperture, beryllium substrate-based mirrors have been used to focus high intensity pulsed laser beams. Finished surfaces have high reflectivity, low wavefront distortion, and high laser damage thresholds. This paper describes the development of a series of metallic coatings, surface finishing techniques, and dielectric overcoatings to meet specified performance requirements. Beryllium substrates were coated with copper, diamond-machined to within 5 micro-inches to final contour, nickel plated, and abrasively figured to final contour. Bond strengths for several bonding processes are presented. Dielectric overcoatings were deposited on finished multimetallic substrates to increase both reflectivity and the damage thresholds. Coatings were deposited using both high and low temperature processes which induce varying stresses in the finished coating substrate system. Data are presented to show the evolution of wavefront distortion, reflectivity, and damage thresholds throughout the many steps involved in fabrication.

The geometry and size of the superconducting coils for the Mirror Fusion Test Facility (MFTF) proposed by Lawrence Livermore Laboratory (LLL) impose certain constraints on the Nb-Ti superconductor. The most promising fabrication process is a wrap-around technique in which a superconducting core is ''wrapped'' in stabilizing copper that contains built-in cooling channels. Insulation between pancake coils and turns is provided by perforated sheets and buttons of epoxy-impregnated fiberglass. Preliminary heat-transfer tests conducted on short samples of single conductor and on a nine-conductor bundle are reported and related to the heat generated in ''normal'' conductors. Investigation of joining techniques, necessary because of the length of conductor needed for the MFTF magnet (about 21 km per coil), show that cold-welded butt joints best meet all requirements. In a test coil now being built, approximately 2 km of prototype MFTF conductor will provide a self-field of about 4 T. Supplementary coils will boost the field to about 6.7 T. The test coils will be used to study cryostatic stability, the propagation and recovery of normal zones, and diagnostic techniques.

A quasilinear model for the evolution of the 2XIIB mirror experiment is presented and shown to reproduce the time evolution of the experiment. From quasilinear theory it follows that the energy lifetime is the Spitzer electron drag time for T/sub e/ approximately less than 0.1T/sub i/. By computing the stability boundary of the DCLC mode, with warm plasma stabilization, the electron temperature is predicted as a function of radial scale length. In addition, the effect of finite length corrections to the Alfven cyclotron mode is assessed.