RF-photonic wideband measurements of energetic pulses on NIF enhanced by compressive sensing algorithms

Abstract

At the National Ignition Facility (NIF), home of the world’s largest laser, a critical pulse screening process is used to ensure safe operating conditions for amplifiers and target optics. To achieve this, high speed recording instrumentation up to 34 GHz measures pulse shape characteristics throughout a facility the size of three football fields—which can be a time consuming procedure. As NIF transitions to higher power handling and increased wavelength flexibility, this lengthy and extensive process will need to be performed far more frequently. We have developed an accelerated highthroughput pulse screener that can identify nonconforming pulses across 48 locations using a single, real-time 34-GHz oscilloscope. Energetic pulse shapes from anywhere in the facility are imprinted onto telecom wavelengths, multiplexed, and transported over fiber without distortion. The critical pulse-screening process at high-energy laser facilities can be reduced from several hours just seconds—allowing greater operational efficiency, agility to system modifications, higher power handling, and reduced costs. Typically, the sampling noise from the oscilloscope places a limit on the achievable signal-to-noise ratio of the measurement, particularly when highly shaped and/or short duration pulses are required by target physicists. We have developed a sophisticated signal processing algorithm for this application that is based on orthogonal matching pursuit (OMP). This algorithm, developed for recovering signals in a compressive sensing system, enables high fidelity single shot screening even for low signal-to-noise ratio measurements.