Department of Atomic Energy, India has taken up the development of ADS in view of many attractive features like inherent safety, capability to transmute large quantities of nuclear waste, better utilization of thorium etc. A roadmap has been finalized for the development of ADS. One of the key components of the ADS is the spallation target. Considering the neutron yield, thermal-hydraulics and radiation damage issues, we are proposing to develop spallation target based on heavy density liquid metals like lead and lead-bismuth-eutectic (LBE). Both window and windowless target configurations are presently being studied. In view of the various advantages we are also studying liquid metal flow circulation based on gas lift mechanism. An R&D programme has been initiated to address various physics and technology issues of ADS target. Under this programme, mercury and LBE experimental facilities are presently being set up. Along with these facilities, computational tools related to spallation physics (FLUKA) and CFD are being developed, and the existing ones are utilized to design the entire target loop as well as sub-systems. In this presentation the details of these activities are presented.

Design and technology demonstration of compact, narrow bandwidth, high repetition rate, tunable SLM dye lasers in two different configurations, namely Littrow and grazing incidence grating (GIG), were carried out in our lab at BARC, India. The single longitudinal mode (SLM) dye laser generates single-mode laser beams of $\sim 400$ MHz (GIG configuration) and $\sim 600$ MHz (Littrow configuration) bandwidth. Detailed performance studies of the Littrow and GIG dye laser resonators showed that GIG dye laser results in narrower linewidth and broad mode hop free wavelength scanning over 70 GHz. In this paper we present experimental studies carried out on the high repetition rate SLM dye laser system.

A simple, accurate and reliable method for measuring the reflectivity of laser-grade mirrors ($R$ > 99.5%) based on cavity ring-down (CRD) technique has been success-fully demonstrated in our laboratory using a pulsed Nd:YAG laser. A fast photomultiplier tube with an oscilloscope was used to detect and analyse the CRD signal. The cavity decay times were measured for three cavities formed by a combination of three mirror pairs. The absolute reflectivities $R_{1}$, $R_{2}$, $R_{3}$ were determined to be 99.94%, 99.63%, 99.52% at normal incidence. The reflectivity of mirrors is measured to an accuracy of 0.01%.

Theoretical and experimental studies of temporal dynamics of grazing incidence grating (GIG) cavity, single-mode dye laser pumped by high repetition rate copper vapour laser (CVL) are presented. Spectral chirp of the dye laser as they evolve in the cavity due to transient phase dynamics of the amplifier gain medium is studied. Effect of grating efficiency, focal spot size, pump power and other cavity parameters on the temporal behaviour of narrow band dye laser such as build-up time, pulse shape and pulse width is studied using the four level dye laser rate equation and photon evolution equation. These results are compared with experimental observations of GIG single-mode dye laser cavity. The effect of pulse stretching of CVL pump pulse on the temporal dynamics of the dye laser is studied.

A simple technique had been demonstrated for measuring flow-induced fluctuations in the single longitudinal mode (SLM) pulsed dye laser. Two prominent frequency components of 10.74 Hz and 48.83 Hz were present in the output of the Nd:YAG-pumped SLM dye laser. The flow-induced frequency component of 48.83 Hz was present due to the revolution per minute of the motor attached to the magnetically coupled gear pump. The time average bandwidth of 180 MHz has been obtained for this SLM dye laser. The effect of pump pulse energy on the bandwidth of the SLM dye laser was studied. The bandwidth of the SLM dye laser was increased to 285 MHz from 180 MHz, when the pump pulse energy was increased to 0.75 mJ from 0.15 mJ for a constant dye flow velocity of 0.5 m/s.