Research of beam conditioning technologies using continuous phase plate, Multi-FM smoothing by spectral dispersion and polarization smoothing

Abstract

In the research of inertial confinement fusion, laser plasma interaction (LPI) is becoming a key problem that affects ignition. Here, multi-frequency modulation (Multi-FM) smoothing by spectral dispersion (SSD), continuous phase plate (CPP) and polarization smoothing (PS) were experimentally studied and implemented on the SG-III laser facility. After using these techniques, the far field distribution of SG-Ⅲ laser facility can be adjusted, controlled and repeated accurately. The output spectrums of the cascade phase modulators used for Multi-FM SSD were stable and the FM-to-AM effect can be restrained. Experiments on SG-III laser facility indicate that when the number of color cycles adopts 1, imposing SSD with 3.3 times diffraction limit (TDL) did not lead to pinhole closure in the spatial filters of preamplifier and main amplifiers with 30-TDL pinhole size. The nonuniformity of the focal spots using Multi-FM SSD, CPP and PS drops to 0.18, comparing to 0.26 with CPP+SSD, 0.57 with CPP+PS and 0.84 with only CPP and wedged lens. Polarization smoothing using flat birefringent plate in the convergent beam of final optics assembly (FOA) was studied. The PS plates were manufactured and equipped on SG-III laser facility for LPI research. Combined beam smoothing and polarization manipulation were also studied to solve the LPI problem. Results indicate that through adjusting dispersion directions of SSD beams in a quad, two dimensional SSD can be obtained. Using polarization control plate (PCP), polarization on the near field and far field can be manipulated, providing new method to solve LPI problem in indirect drive laser fusion.