A high-power, Joule-class, nanosecond temporally shaped multi-pass ring laser amplifier system with two neodymium-doped phosphate glass (Nd:glass) laser heads is demonstrated. The laser amplifier system consists of three parts: an all-fiber structure seeder, a diode-pumped Nd:glass regenerative amplifier and a multi-pass ring amplifier, where the thermally induced depolarization of two laser heads is studied experimentally and theoretically. Following the injection of a square pulse with the pulse energy of 0.9 mJ and pulse width of 6 ns, a 0.969-J high-energy laser pulse at 1 Hz was generated, which had the ability to change the waveform arbitrarily, based on the all-fiber structure front end. The experimental results show that the proposed laser system is promising to be adopted in the preamplifier of high-power laser facilities.

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.

Polarization mode dispersion (PMD) in fibers for high-power lasers can induce significant frequency modulation to amplitude modulation (FM-to-AM) conversion. However, existing techniques are not sufficiently flexible to achieve efficient compensation for such FM-to-AM conversion. By analyzing the nonuniform transmission spectrum caused by PMD, we found that the large-scale envelope of the transmission spectrum has more serious impacts on the amount of AM. In order to suppress the PMD-induced FM-to-AM conversion, we propose a novel tunable spectral filter with multiple degrees of freedom based on a half-wave plate, a nematic liquid crystal, and an axis-rotated polarization-maintaining fiber. Peak wavelength, free spectral range (FSR), and modulation depth of the filter are decoupled and can be controlled independently, which is verified through both simulations and experiments. The filter is utilized to compensate for the PMD-induced FM-to-AM conversion in the front end of a high-power laser facility. The results indicate that, for a pulse with phase-modulation frequency of 22.82 GHz, the FM-to-AM conversion could be reduced from 18% to 3.2% within a short time and maintained below 6.5% for 3 h. The proposed filter is also promising for other applications that require flexible spectral control such as high-speed channel selection in optical communication networks.

A high power laser system was used to drive the ignition of inertial confinement fusion (ICF), of which the high energy, the uniform focal spot, the accurate laser waveform, and the synchronization between the laser beams are key parameters. To accomplish this, global laser characteristics control should be assured, which was the main purpose of the injection laser system. In this paper, the key technological progress involved in the improvement of the performance of the injection laser of SG-II is reported, including frequency domain control, time domain control, near-field spatial shaping, pre-amplifier technology, and the optical parametric chirped pulse amplification pump source.

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.

An optically addressed liquid crystal modulator for wavefront control of 1053 nm laser beam is reported in this paper. Its working principle, control method and spatial phase modulation capability are mainly introduced. A new method of measuring the relationship between gray level and phase retardation is proposed. The rationality of the curve is further confirmed by designing special experiments. According to the curve, several spatial phase distributions have been realized by this home-made device. The results show that, not only the maximum phase retardation is larger than $2\unicode[STIX]{x03C0}$ for 1053 nm wavelength, but also the control accuracy is high. Compared with the liquid crystal on silicon type spatial light modulator, this kind of modulator has the advantages of generating smooth phase distribution and avoiding the black-matrix effect.

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.

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.

Suprathermal electrons produced by laser–plasma interactions at 0.53-μm laser wavelength have been investigated using 19 electron spectrometers. The targets were 2- and 10-μm-thick Al foils, while the laser average intensities were 2 × 1013 and 7 × 1014 W/cm2. A double temperature distribution was observed in the electron energy spectrum: the lower electron temperature was below 25 keV, whereas the higher was ~50 keV. The angular distribution of the total suprathermal electron energy approximately obeyed the Gaussian distribution, peaking along the k vector of the incident laser beam for perpendicular incidence. Furthermore, the conversion rate of laser energy into escaped suprathermal electron energy over the π sr solid angle was ~10−4 at $\sim \!\!10^{14} \; {\rm W}/{\rm c}{\rm m}^{\rm 2}$, increasing almost linearly with the laser intensity.

The Shenguang-II Upgrade (SG-II Up) facility is an under-construction high-power laser driver with eight beams, 24 kJ energy, 3 ns pulse duration and ultraviolet laser output, in the Shanghai Institute of Optics and Fine Mechanics, China. The prototype design and experimental research of the prototype final optics assembly (FOA), which is one of the most important parts of the SG-II Up facility, have been completed on the ninth beam of the SG-II facility. Thirty-three shots were fired using 1-${\it\omega}$ energy from 1000 to 4500 J and 3-${\it\omega}$ energy from 500 to 2403 J with a 3 ns square pulse. During the experiments, emphasis was given to the process of optical damage and to the effects of clean-gas control. A numerical model of the FOA generated by the Integrated Computer Engineering and Manufacturing code for Computational Fluid Dynamics (ICEMCFD) demonstrated that a flux within $1{-}5~\text{l s}^{-1}$ and a 180 s period is effectual to avoid contaminant sputtering to the optics. The presence of surface ‘mooning’ damage and surface spots located outside the clear aperture are induced by contaminants such as wire, silica gel and millimeter order fiber and metal.

An effective damage test method based on a marker-based watershed algorithm with gray control (MWGC) is proposed to study the properties of damage induced by near-field laser irradiation for large-aperture laser facilities. Damage tests were performed on fused silica samples and information on the size of damage sites was obtained by this new algorithm, which can effectively suppress the issue of over-segmentation of images resulting from non-uniform illumination in dark-field imaging. Experimental analysis and results show that the lateral damage growth on the exit surface is exponential, and the number of damage sites decreases sharply with damage site size in the damage site distribution statistics. The average damage growth coefficients fitted according to the experimental results for Corning-7980 and Heraeus-Suprasil 312 samples at 351 nm are $\def \xmlpi #1{}\def \mathsfbi #1{\boldsymbol {\mathsf {#1}}}\let \le =\leqslant \let \leq =\leqslant \let \ge =\geqslant \let \geq =\geqslant \def \Pr {\mathit {Pr}}\def \Fr {\mathit {Fr}}\def \Rey {\mathit {Re}}1.10 \pm 0.31$ and $0.60 \pm 0.09$, respectively.

The process of high power laser interaction with the large scale length corona plasma produced by the leading edge of the laser pulse has been investigated. Early experimental results are re-analyzed and conclusions drawn. In particular, studies of the close connection of unstable filamentation instability with – mainly – two-plasmon decay and – partly – stimulated Raman scattering, stimulated Brillouin scattering, and resonance absorption are carried out in this paper. The positive and negative effects of filamentation instability are also discussed.

A theoretical model of resonance absorption initiated by self-focusing filamentation is proposed on the bases of experiments on the 2ω0 time resolved spectrum, slow ion emission and filamentation of 3ω0/2 emission. A number of aspects of the experimental results can be well explained by this model.

Both temporally and spectrally resolved fine structures of 90° lateral (3/2)ω0 harmonic emission were experimentally observed. The existence of (3/2)ω0 harmonic filaments is attributed to formation from the moving filament bottom at its transient nc/4 surface. The double hump structure with its intense red hump of laterally emitted (3/2)ω0 spectrum can also be explained by a Doppler correction in addition to the thermal correction. Estimation of both red and blue spectral shifts with our simple model is qualitatively consistent with experimental results. Experiments showed that the (3/2)ω0 emission was evidently suppressed by using a broad band laser. This may be promising for superhot electron suppression.

Both broad and narrow band Nd glass laser beams with energies 1 to 3 joules and pulse width 150 ps were used in aluminium plane target experiments at laser irradiances 1 to 3 × 10 14 W cm −2 on target surfaces. The incident laser beams were angled at 0°, 7·2°, 14·4°, 21·6°, 28·8°, 36°, 43·2° to the target surface normal and the polarization was perpendicular or parallel to the incident plane (s or p polarization). The experiments showed that the maximum resonance absorption occurred near to incident angles of about 9° to 10° and the broadband resonance absorption was slightly smaller than that of the narrowband. At large incident angles the broadband absorption was larger than that of the narrowband.