  In recent years, our understanding of high energy density plasmas has played
an important role in improving inertial fusion confinement and in emerging new
fields of physics, such as laboratory astrophysics. Every new idea required
developing innovative experimental platforms at high power laser facilities,
such as OMEGA or NIF. These facilities, designed to focus all their beams onto
spherical targets or hohlraum windows, are now required to shine them on more
complex targets. While the pointing on planar geometries is relatively
straightforward, it becomes problematic for cylindrical targets, or target with
more complex geometries. This publication describes how the distribution of
laser beams on a cylindrical target can be done simply by using a set of
physical laws as a pointing procedure. The advantage of the method is
threefold. First, it is straightforward, requiring no mathematical enterprise
besides solving ordinary differential equations. Second, it will converge if a
local optimum exists. Finally, it is computationally inexpensive. Experimental
results show that this approach produces a geometrical beam distribution that
yields cylindrically symmetric implosions.
