Implementation and performance of beam smoothing on 10 beams of the Nova Laser
Recent simulations and experiments on Nova indicate that some level of smoothing may be required to suppress filamentation in plasmas on the National Ignition Facility (NIF), resulting in the addition of 1-D smoothing capability to the current baseline design. Control of stimulated Brillouin scattering (SBS) and filamentation is considered essential to the success of laser fusion because they affect the amount and location of laser energy delivered to the x-ray conversion region (hohlraum wall) for indirect drive and to the absorptive region for direct drive, Smoothing by spectral dispersion (SSD)[1], reduces these instabilities by reducing nonuniformities in the focal irradiance when averaged over a finite time interval. We have installed SSD on Nova to produce beam smoothing on all 10 beam lines. A single dispersion grating is located in a position common to all 10 beam lines early in the preamplifier chain. This location limits the 1{omega} bandwidth to 2.2 {angstrom} with sufficient dispersion to displace the speckle field of each frequency component at the target plane by one half speckle diameter. Several beam lines were modified to allow orientation of the dispersion on each arm relative to the hohlraum wall. After conversion to the third harmonic the beam passes through a kinoform phase plate (KPP) designed to produce an elliptical spot at best focus. The KPPs produce a focal spot having an elliptical flat-top envelope with a superimposed speckle pattern. Over 93% of the energy is contained in the central 400 km. Calculations indicate a 16% rms. intensity variance will be reached after 330 ps for a single beam.
- Research Organization:
- Lawrence Livermore National Lab. (LLNL), Livermore, CA (United States)
- Sponsoring Organization:
- USDOE Office of Defense Programs (DP) (US)
- DOE Contract Number:
- W-7405-Eng-48
- OSTI ID:
- 16346
- Report Number(s):
- UCRL-JC-124503; CONF-9610225-; ON: DE98050750; TRN: US200513%%202
- Resource Relation:
- Conference: 2nd Annual International Conference on Solid-State Lasers for Applications to Inertial Confinement Fusion, Paris (FR), 10/22/1996--10/25/1996; Other Information: Supercedes report DE98050750; PBD: 11 Mar 97; PBD: 11 Mar 1997
- Country of Publication:
- United States
- Language:
- English
Similar Records
Improved gas-filled hohlraum performance on Nova with beam smoothing
Observation of reduced beam deflection using smoothed beams in gas-filled hohlraum symmetry experiments at Nova