The paper discusses the performance characteristics of a Nd: glass laser system designed for laser produced plasma studies. It consists of aQ-switched oscillator followed by two amplifier stages. The output behaviour of the oscillator, i.e. laser pulse duration, peak power and optimum coupling, has been studied and is in good agreement with theory. Gain characteristics of amplifiers were obtained as a function of various parameters. Energies in excess of 7 J with pulse durations as small as 18 nsec were obtained giving rise to 400 MW peak power.

The study of transient behaviour of a pulse pumped solid state laser system has assumed importance on account of SLM generation by self-seeding with the pre-lase signal. This paper reports on the observations of seed pulses for two different Nd: YAG laser rods, one with anti-reflection coating (AR) on end faces and the other without. The latter displays single longitudinal mode behaviour in each of the relaxation pulse train while the former displays multimode behaviour. Our observations are well explained by the ‘active etalon concept’ introduced earlier.

The synchrotron radiation sources, INDUS-1 and INDUS-2 are electron storage rings of 450 MeV and 2 GeV beam energies respectively. INDUS-1 is designed to produce VUV radiation whereas INDUS-2 will be mainly used to produce x-rays. INDUS-1 is presently undergoing commissioning whereas INDUS-2 is under construction. Both these rings have a common injector system comprising of a microtron and a synchrotron. Basic design features of these sources and their injector system are discussed in this paper. The radiation beamlines to be set up on these sources are also described.