John D. Lindl (born July 27, 1946 in Toledo, Ohio) is an American physicist who specializes in inertial confinement fusion (ICF).
[4][5] In the same year, Lindl joined the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL), where he worked for John Nuckolls in the early days of inertial fusion research (e.g. optimal target design for lasers and particle beams, hydrodynamic instabilities, plasma development in the cavity and cavity design, implosion symmetry).
After the ICF research at LLNL became declassified in 1993, Lindl wrote an overview article in Physics of Plasmas,[6] which then led to his book on inertial fusion in 1997.
Lindl became the chief scientist at the National Ignition Facility in 2005, whose construction began in 1997 and was inaugurated in 2009 (with the first large-scale laser target experiments).
[7] He has also recently been involved in magnetic fusion research at the LLNL's Sustained Spheromak Physics Experiment (SSPX).