Shiva laser

Shiva amplifier chains showing spatial filter tubes (white) and Nd:glass amplifier structures (short blue tubes closest to camera). Portions of the 1982 Disney film Tron were filmed at the site.
Shiva target chamber during maintenance.
View inside the Shiva target chamber, 1978. The needle-like object in the center of the image is the target holder, various instruments are pointed to image the explosions at its tip.

The Shiva laser was a powerful 20-beam infrared neodymium glass (silica glass) laser built at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in 1977 for the study of inertial confinement fusion (ICF) and long-scale-length laser-plasma interactions. Presumably, the device was named after the multi-armed form of the Hindu god Shiva, due to the laser's multi-beamed structure. Shiva was instrumental in demonstrating a particular problem in compressing targets with lasers, leading to a major new device being constructed to address these problems, the Nova laser.