High direct drive illumination uniformity achieved by multi-parameter optimization approach: a case study of Shenguang III laser facility

Abstract

The uniformity of the compression driver is of fundamental importance for inertial confinement fusion (ICF). In this paper, the illumination uniformity on a spherical capsule during the initial imprinting phase directly driven by laser beams has been considered. We aim to explore methods to achieve high direct drive illumination uniformity on laser facilities designed for indirect drive ICF. There are many parameters that would affect the irradiation uniformity, such as Polar Direct Drive displacement quantity, capsule radius, laser spot size and intensity distribution within a laser beam. A novel approach to reduce the root mean square illumination non-uniformity based on multi-parameter optimizing approach (particle swarm optimization) is proposed, which enables us to obtain a set of optimal parameters over a large parameter space. Finally, this method is applied to improve the direct drive illumination uniformity provided by Shenguang III laser facility and the illumination non-uniformity is reduced from 5.62% to 0.23% for perfectly balanced beams. Moreover, beam errors (power imbalance and pointing error) are taken into account to provide a more practical solution and results show that this multi-parameter optimization approach is effective.