Large aperture kinoform phase plates in fused silica for spatial beam smoothing on Nova and the Beamlet Lasers
It is now widely recognized that spatial beam smoothing (homogenization) is essential in coupling the laser energy to the inertial confinement fusion (ICF) targets. For the indirect drive approach to ICF, it is desirable to distribute the laser energy into a uniformly speckled profile that has a flat-top super-Gaussian envelope (8th power or higher) and contains greater than 95% of the energy inside the super-Gaussian profile. Spatial smoothing is easily achieved by introducing a binary random phase plate (RPP) in the beam. This produces a homogenized far-field pattern which consists of an overall envelope function determined by the RPP element superimposed with a fine scale speckle pattern arising due to the interference among the various RPP elements. Although easy to fabricate and currently in routine use in many fusion laboratories, the binary RPPs do not meet the ICF requirements stated above since the far-field intensity profile is restricted to essentially an Airy function containing only 84% (an upper limit) of the energy inside the central spot. Approaches using lenslet arrays (refractive or diffractive) have limited use since they operate in the quasi-far-field and have a short depth of focus. The limitations of the RPPs can be overcome by relaxing the binary phase constraint. We have recently presented 5 continuously varying phase screens for tailoring the focal plane irradiance profiles. Called kinoform phase plates (KPPs), these phase screens offer complete flexibility in tailoring the focal plane envelope and, at the same time, increasing the energy efficiency inside the focal spot. In this paper we discuss the design and fabrication of such kinoform phase plates in fused silica for spatial beam smoothing on the Nova and the Beamlet lasers. Since the phase plates are used at the end of the laser chain, KPPs on Nova and Beamlet have to be fabricated on large aperture optics (65-cm diameter and 40-cm square substrates respectively). The following section presents a brief review of process for designing the KPPs. In section 3, we discuss the fabrication of large aperture KPPs in fused silica substrates. The optical performance of these KPPs is discussed in section 4 which is followed by a summary.
- Research Organization:
- Lawrence Livermore National Lab. (LLNL), Livermore, CA (United States)
- Sponsoring Organization:
- USDOE, Washington, DC (United States)
- DOE Contract Number:
- W-7405-ENG-48
- OSTI ID:
- 622740
- Report Number(s):
- UCRL-JC-124511; CONF-9610225-; ON: DE98050267
- Resource Relation:
- Conference: 2. annual solid state lasers for applications to inertial confinement fusion (ICF), Paris (France), 22-25 Oct 1996; Other Information: PBD: Mar 1997
- Country of Publication:
- United States
- Language:
- English
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