The characterization of energetic protons generated in the ShenGuang-II UP petawatt laser interactions with foil targets has been systematically studied. The proton energy spectra and angular distributions are measured with a radiochromic film stack. It shows that the proton energy spectra have a Boltzmann distribution with temperature of about 2.8 MeV and cutoff energy of about 20 MeV. The divergence angles of protons vary from 10° to 60°, dependent on the proton energy. The proton source size and location are investigated via the proton point-projection mesh imaging. The proton virtual sources are found to locate tens to hundreds of microns in front of the foil target, depending on the proton energies. A Monte Carlo simulation estimates the diameter of the virtual proton source to be about 12 μm for the protons with energy of 16.8 MeV, which is much smaller than the laser focus size of about 50 μm. The spatial resolution of the 16.8 MeV proton imaging is quantified with the point spread function to be about 15 μm, which is consistent with the proton virtual source size. These results will be important for the users conducting experiments with the protons as a backlighting source on the ShenGuang-II UP petawatt laser.

A new approach to target development for laboratory astrophysics experiments at high-power laser facilities is presented. With the dawn of high-power lasers, laboratory astrophysics has emerged as a field, bringing insight into physical processes in astrophysical objects, such as the formation of stars. An important factor for success in these experiments is targetry. To date, targets have mainly relied on expensive and challenging microfabrication methods. The design presented incorporates replaceable machined parts that assemble into a structure that defines the experimental geometry. This can make targets cheaper and faster to manufacture, while maintaining robustness and reproducibility. The platform is intended for experiments on plasma flows, but it is flexible and may be adapted to the constraints of other experimental setups. Examples of targets used in experimental campaigns are shown, including a design for insertion in a high magnetic field coil. Experimental results are included, demonstrating the performance of the targets.

As optical parametric chirped pulse amplification has been widely adopted for the generation of extreme intensity laser sources, nonlinear crystals of large aperture are demanded for high-energy amplifiers. Yttrium calcium oxyborate (YCa4O(BO3)3, YCOB) is capable of being grown with apertures exceeding 100 mm, which makes it possible for application in systems of petawatt scale. In this paper, we experimentally demonstrated for the first time to our knowledge, an ultra-broadband non-collinear optical parametric amplifier with YCOB for petawatt-scale compressed pulse generation at 800 nm. Based on the SG-II 5 PW facility, amplified signal energy of approximately 40 J was achieved and pump-to-signal conversion efficiency was up to 42.3%. A gain bandwidth of 87 nm was realized and supported a compressed pulse duration of 22.3 fs. The near-field and wavefront aberration represented excellent characteristics, which were comparable with those achieved in lithium triborate-based amplifiers. These results verified the great potential for YCOB utilization in the future.

We report on the design and first results from experiments looking at the formation of radiative shocks on the Shenguang-II (SG-II) laser at the Shanghai Institute of Optics and Fine Mechanics in China. Laser-heating of a two-layer CH/CH–Br foil drives a $\sim 40$ km/s shock inside a gas cell filled with argon at an initial pressure of 1 bar. The use of gas-cell targets with large (several millimetres) lateral and axial extent allows the shock to propagate freely without any wall interactions, and permits a large field of view to image single and colliding counter-propagating shocks with time-resolved, point-projection X-ray backlighting ($\sim 20$ μm source size, 4.3 keV photon energy). Single shocks were imaged up to 100 ns after the onset of the laser drive, allowing to probe the growth of spatial nonuniformities in the shock apex. These results are compared with experiments looking at counter-propagating shocks, showing a symmetric drive that leads to a collision and stagnation from $\sim 40$ ns onward. We present a preliminary comparison with numerical simulations with the radiation hydrodynamics code ARWEN, which provides expected plasma parameters for the design of future experiments in this facility.

A nanoparticle-based drug delivery system is first established by mesoporous silica encapsulating amino acid–intercalated layered double hydroxide (LDH) to construct nanocomposites AA-LDH@MS. The amino acids including phenylalanine (Phe) and histidine (His) with aromatic groups are intercalated into LDH as the cores Phe-LDH and His-LDH. These nanocomposites AA-LDH@MS display multispaces of the interlayer spaces of LDH and porous channels of mesoporous silica to load drugs. Moreover, amino acid molecules provide the interaction sites to improve effectively loading amounts of drugs. 5-Fluorouracil (5-FU) is used as the cargo molecules to observe the delivery in vitro. The results indicate that the maximum loading amounts of drugs are up to 392 mg/g at 60 °C for 12 h in the nanocomposite Phe-LDH@MS. All the nanocomposites exhibit the sustained release of 5-FU at pH 4 and pH 7.4. The Korsmeyer–Peppas model is used to fit the kinetic plot of the drug release in vitro, which concludes that 5-FU release from AA-LDH@MS belongs to Fickian diffusion.

We present the design and experiment of a broadband optical parametric chirped-pulse amplifier (OPCPA) which provides high conversion efficiency and good beam quality at 808 nm wavelength. Using a three-dimensional spatial and temporal numerical model, several design considerations necessary to achieve high conversion efficiency, good beam quality and good output stability are discussed. To improve the conversion efficiency and broaden the amplified signal bandwidth simultaneously, the nonlinear crystal length and OPCPA parameters are analyzed and optimized with the concept of dissipating amplified idler between optical parametric amplification (OPA) of two crystals configuration. In the experiment, an amplifier consisting of two OPCPA stages of ‘L’ type configuration was demonstrated by using the optimized parameters. An amplified signal energy of 160 mJ was achieved with a total pump-to-signal efficiency of 35% (43% efficiency for the OPCPA stage 2). The output bandwidth of signal pulse reached 80 nm and the signal pulse was compressed to 24 fs. The energy stability reached 1.67% RMS at 3% pump energy variation. The optimized OPCPA amplifier operates at a repetition rate of 1 Hz and is used as a front-end injection for the main amplifier of SG-II 5PW laser facility.

In this paper, we review the status of the multifunctional experimental platform at the National Laboratory of High Power Laser and Physics (NLHPLP). The platform, including the SG-II laser facility, SG-II 9th beam, SG-II upgrade (SG-II UP) facility, and SG-II 5 PW facility, is operational and available for interested scientists studying inertial confinement fusion (ICF) and a broad range of high-energy-density physics. These facilities can provide important experimental capabilities by combining different pulse widths of nanosecond, picosecond, and femtosecond scales. In addition, the SG-II UP facility, consisting of a single petawatt system and an eight-beam nanosecond system, is introduced including several laser technologies that have been developed to ensure the performance of the facility. Recent developments of the SG-II 5 PW facility are also presented.

We present a recent progress of the SG-II 5PW facility, which designed a multi-petawatt ultrashort pulse laser based on optical parametric chirped-pulse amplification (OPCPA). The prior two optical parametric amplifiers have been accomplished and chirped pulses with an energy of 49.7 J and a full-width-at-half-maximum (FWHM) spectrum bandwidth of 85 nm have been achieved. In the PW-scale optical parametric amplification (OPA), with the pump pulse that has an energy of 118 J from the second harmonic generation of the SG-II 7th beam, the pump-to-signal conversion efficiency is up to 41.9%, which to the best of our knowledge is the highest among all of the reported values for OPCPA systems. The compressed pulse is higher than 37 J in 21 fs (1.76 PW), and the focal spot is ${\sim}10~\unicode[STIX]{x03BC}\text{m}$ after the closed-loop corrections by the adaptive optics. Limited by the repetition of the pump laser, the SG-II 5PW facility operates one shot per hour. It has successfully been employed for high energy physics experiments.

In high power laser facility for inertial confinement fusion research, final optics assembly (FOA) plays a critical role in the frequency conversion, beam focusing, color separation, beam sampling and debris shielding. The design and performance of FOA in SG-II Upgrade laser facility are mainly introduced here. Due to the limited space and short focal length, a coaxial aspheric wedged focus lens is designed and applied in the FOA configuration. Then the ghost image analysis, the focus characteristic analysis, the B integral control design and the optomechanical design are carried out in the FOA design phase. In order to ensure the FOA performance, two key technologies are developed including measurement and adjustment technique of the wedged focus lens and the stray light management technique based on ground glass. Experimental results show that the design specifications including laser fluence, frequency conversion efficiency and perforation efficiency of the focus spot have been achieved, which meet the requirements of physical experiments well.

Temporal contrast is one of the crucial physical determinants which guarantee the successful performance of laser–matter interaction experiments. We generally reviewed the influences on the temporal contrast in three categories of noises based on the requirement by the physical mechanisms. The spatiotemporal influences on temporal contrast at the focal region of the chromatic aberration and propagation time difference introduced by large-aperture broadband spatial filters, which were spatiotemporally coupled with compression and focusing, were calculated and discussed with a practical case in SG-II 5 PW ultrashort petawatt laser. The system-wide spatiotemporal coupling existing in large-aperture broadband ultrashort petawatt lasers was proved to be one of the possible causes of temporal contrast degradation in the focal region.

The Shen-Guang II Upgrade (SG-II-U) laser facility consists of eight high-power nanosecond laser beams and one short-pulse picosecond petawatt laser. It is designed for the study of inertial confinement fusion (ICF), especially for conducting fast ignition (FI) research in China and other basic science experiments. To perform FI successfully with hohlraum targets containing a golden cone, the long-pulse beam and cylindrical hohlraum as well as the short-pulse beam and cone target alignment must satisfy tight specifications (30 and $20~\unicode[STIX]{x03BC}\text{m}$ rms for each case). To explore new ICF ignition targets with six laser entrance holes (LEHs), a rotation sensor was adapted to meet the requirements of a three-dimensional target and correct beam alignment. In this paper, the strategy for aligning the nanosecond beam based on target alignment sensor (TAS) is introduced and improved to meet requirements of the picosecond lasers and the new six LEHs hohlraum targets in the SG-II-U facility. The expected performance of the alignment system is presented, and the alignment error is also discussed.

Coccolithophores and Parmales are important functional groups of calcified and siliceous marine nanophytoplankton. Large-scale biogeographic distributions of the two groups were investigated based on 71 samples that were collected in the Atlantic Ocean. Using a scanning electron microscope, a total of 48 taxa of coccolithophores and eight taxa of Parmales were recorded, with Emiliania huxleyi, Tetraparma pelagica and Triparma strigata as the predominant forms. The highest abundances of coccolithophores (376 × 103 cells l−1) and Parmales (624 × 103 cells l−1) were observed in waters north-east of the Falkland Islands and the South Georgia Island, in close association with the Subantarctic Front and Polar Front, respectively. Three major biogeographic assemblages, i.e. the Falkland Shelf Assemblage, the Southern Ocean Assemblage and the Atlantic Ocean Assemblage, were revealed in cluster analysis. Additionally, canonical correspondence analysis indicated that temperature significantly affects the latitudinal patterns of the two algal groups. High abundances of Parmales were closely coupled with those of E. huxleyi in waters of the Southern Ocean with low temperature (<10°C). However, the number of coccolithophore species, along with the Shannon–Weaver diversity, significantly increased with elevated temperature, suggesting more diverse assemblages in tropical waters.

The fourth order average vector field (AVF) method is applied to solve the “Good” Boussinesq equation. The semi-discrete system of the “good” Boussinesq equation obtained by the pseudo-spectral method in spatial variable, which is a classical finite dimensional Hamiltonian system, is discretizated by the fourth order average vector field method. Thus, a new high order energy conservation scheme of the “good” Boussinesq equation is obtained. Numerical experiments confirm that the new high order scheme can preserve the discrete energy of the “good” Boussinesq equation exactly and simulate evolution of different solitary waves well.

A new scheme for the Zakharov-Kuznetsov (ZK) equation with the accuracy order of is proposed. The multi-symplectic conservation property of the new scheme is proved. The backward error analysis of the new multi-symplectic scheme is also implemented. The solitary wave evolution behaviors of the Zakharov-Kunetsov equation is investigated by the new multi-symplectic scheme. The accuracy of the scheme is analyzed.

A total of twenty-seven species of marine-living coccolithophores were recorded from seawater samples that were collected during two spring cruises along the shelf regions of the Yellow Sea (YS) and the East China Sea (ECS). They were classified into ten families and four orders, with some additional species incertae sedis. Most of these species were heterococcolithophores, and no holococcolithophores were examined from the YS waters. Six species were recorded for the first time from the coastal waters of the China Seas and their morphological characteristics are described and photographically illustrated in this paper. They were Cyrtosphaera lecaliae, Syracosphaera histrica, Syracosphaera marginaporata, Pappomonas cf. sp. type 3, Calyptrolithophora papillifera and Corisphaera strigilis. Three types of Emiliania huxleyi, type A, type B/C and type C, were examined. Species of the genus Syracosphaera, in addition to E. huxleyi and Gephyrocapsa oceanica, frequently occurred at the surveyed sites. The coccolithophore assemblages in the offshore waters of the ECS were characterized by high species diversity—fourteen species in one sample. This finding indicated that the shelf waters adjacent to the Kuroshio path were ideal habitats for living coccolithophores. The variation in taxonomic composition of these algae could be associated with differences in their preferred habitats.