This PDF file contains the front matter associated with SPIE Proceedings Volume 9345, including the Title Page, Copyright information, Table of Contents, Invited Panel Discussion, and Conference Committee listing.

This paper describes the commissioning of the LMJ. The LMJ is a Nd-glass laser facility, located near Bordeaux (France), designed to focus up to 44 group of 4 beam lines (176 UV beam lines) on a micro-target located at the center of a 10 meters diameter spherical target chamber. These past years have been devoted to assembly and integrate the main structures in the target bay and in the 4 laser bays. The year 2014 saw the progressive commissioning of the equipment in order to realize the first experiments. The first part of the process involved the front-end commissioning, the measurement of the amplifying gain, the test of the wave front control system, the alignment of the laser beam from the front end to the final optics assembly, the tuning of the KDP crystals to optimize the frequency conversion efficiency. In the target bay, the main part of the work was to align the different equipment near the chamber center: the micro-target, the plasma diagnostic inserter and the plasma diagnostic itself and finally to measure the pointing performance on target. The communication between the equipment through the integrated control system and the adjustment of the integrated timing system in charge of the triggers signal for all the equipment were also a great challenge.

High energy solid state lasers are being developed for fusion experiments and other research applications where high energy per pulse is required but the repetition rate is rather low, around 10Hz. We report our results on high peak power diode laser stacks used as optical pumps for these lasers. The stacks are based on 10 mm bars with 4 mm cavity length and 55% fill factor, with peak power exceeding 500 W per bar. These bars are stacked and mounted on a cooler which provides backside cooling and electrical insulation. Currently we mount 25 bars per cooler for a nominal peak power of 12.5 kW, but in principle the mounting scheme can be scaled to a different number of devices depending on the application. Pretesting of these bars before soldering on the cooler enables us to select devices with similar wavelength and thus we maintain tight control of the spectral width (FWHM less than 6 nm). Fine adjustments of the centroid wavelength can be done by means of temperature of the cooling fluid or bias current. The available wavelength range spans from 880 nm to 1000 nm, and the wavelength of the entire assembly of stacks can be controlled to within 0.5 nm of the target value, which makes these stacks suitable for pumping a variety of gain media. The devices are fast axis collimated, with over 95% power being collimated in 6 mrad (full angle). The slow axis divergence is 9° (full angle) for 95% power content.

Parsons and LLNL scientists and engineers performed design and engineering work for power plant pre-conceptual designs based on the anticipated laser fusion demonstrations at the National Ignition Facility (NIF). Work included identifying concepts of operations and maintenance (O&M) and associated requirements relevant to fusion power plant systems analysis.

A laser fusion power plant would incorporate a large process and power conversion facility with a laser system and fusion engine serving as the heat source, based in part on some of the systems and technologies advanced at NIF. Process operations would be similar in scope to those used in chemical, oil refinery, and nuclear waste processing facilities, while power conversion operations would be similar to those used in commercial thermal power plants. While some aspects of the tritium fuel cycle can be based on existing technologies, many aspects of a laser fusion power plant presents several important and unique O&M requirements that demand new solutions. For example, onsite recovery of tritium; unique remote material handling systems for use in areas with high radiation, radioactive materials, or high temperatures; a five-year fusion engine target chamber replacement cycle with other annual and multi-year cycles anticipated for major maintenance of other systems, structures, and components (SSC); and unique SSC for fusion target waste recycling streams.

This paper describes fusion power plant O&M concepts and requirements, how O&M requirements could be met in design, and how basic organizational and planning issues can be addressed for a safe, reliable, economic, and feasible fusion power plant.

The rasterscan procedure, developed to test large components, is an efficient method that allows measuring extremely low surface damage density (until 0.01 site/cm² for large optics). This procedure was improved in terms of accuracy. The equipment, test procedure and data analysis to perform this damage test of large aperture optics are described. The originality of the refined procedure is that a shot to shot correlation is performed between the damage occurrence and the corresponding fluence by recording beam parameters of hundreds of thousands of shots during the qualification. Because tests are realized with small Gaussian beams (about 1mm @ 1/e), beam overlap and beam shape are key parameters which have to be taken into account in order to determine damage density. After complete data analysis and treatment, a repeatable metrology has been reached. The measurement is destructive for the sample. However the consideration of error bars on defects distributions allows us to compare data obtained on a same batch of optical components. This will permit to reach reproducible metrology. Then this procedure provides a straightforward means of comparing the experimental results obtained from several facilities using different lasers. Recently, an additional step has been added to the procedure, a growth step that permits considering only growing damage sites. To the end the lifetime of large optics on high power laser can be predicted.

We investigate the laser damage resistance of multilayer dielectric (MLD) diffraction gratings used in the pulse compressors for high energy, high peak power laser systems such as the Advanced Radiographic Capability (ARC) Petawatt laser on the National Ignition Facility (NIF). Our study includes measurements of damage threshold and damage density (ρ(Φ)) with picosecond laser pulses at 1053 nm under relevant operational conditions. Initial results indicate that sparse defects present on the optic surface from the manufacturing processes are responsible for damage initiation at laser fluences below the damage threshold indicated by the standard R-on-1 test methods, as is the case for laser damage with nanosecond pulse durations. As such, this study supports the development of damage density measurements for more accurate predictions on the damage performance of large area optics.

Pulsed lasers with high repetition rate have attracted more and more attention in recent years, due to the increased demand in many fields, including industrial applications such as laser processing and micromachining. However, the damage thresholds of optics exposed to high repetitive laser pulses, especially at the 355 nm wavelength, remain a major concern. Previous work about laser damage in optics was performed mainly by using pulsed lasers with 1-on-1 test or N-on-1 test but with very low pulse repetition rate (for example, from several Hz to hundreds of Hz). The results obtained, however, cannot be directly extended to analyze and understand the damage processes induced by high repetitive laser pulses. In this paper, we present our recent progress on investigation of damage processes on fused silica induced by a pulsed 355 nm laser with high repetition rate. By using a system based on photothermal effect, we have realized in-situ monitoring of laser-material-interaction dynamics through measuring the laser-induced absorption evolution. The results demonstrate that the initiation of laser-induced damage process occur far before any physical damage observable using high-resolution optical microscopes. The damage processes typically are long term accumulation effects of laser-induced increase in absorption, that itself is depending on both the irradiation fluence and repetition rate. The photothermally measured results are also compared with results obtained by using light scattering technique. The results show that such a photothermal technique is a very useful tool for in-situ studies of the damage process induced by high repetitive laser pulses at 355 nm wavelength.

For a lot of applications like spectrometer and high power laser roughness as an important parameter has been discussed over and over again. Especially for high power systems the surface quality is crucial for determining the damage threshold and therefore the field of application. Above that, it has often been difficult to compare roughness measurements because of different measurement methods and the usage of filters and surface fits. Measurement results differ significantly depending on filters and especially on the measured surface size. Insights will be given how values behave depending on the quality of surface and the size of measured area.

Many applications require a high quality of roughness in order to reduce scattering. Some of them in order to prevent from damage like high power laser applications. Others like spectrometers seek to increase the signal-to-noise ratio. Most of them have already been built with spherical surfaces. With higher demands on efficiency and more sophisticated versions aspherical surfaces need to be employed. Therefore, the high requirement in roughness known from spherical surfaces is also needed on aspherical surfaces. For one thing, the constant change of curvature of an aspherical surface accounts for the superior performance, for another thing, it prevents from using classical polishing technics, which guarantied this low roughness. New methods need to be qualified. In addition, also results of a new manufacturing process will be shown allowing low roughness on aspheric even with remarkable departure from the best fit sphere.

For over fifteen years astronomers at the University of Maryland and theorists and experimentalists at LLNL have investigated the origin and dynamics of the famous Pillars of the Eagle Nebula, and similar parsec-scale structures at the boundaries of HII regions in molecular hydrogen clouds. Eagle Nebula was selected as one of the National Ignition Facility (NIF) Science programs, and has been awarded four NIF shots to study the cometary model of pillar formation. These experiments require a long-duration drive, 30 ns or longer, to drive deeply nonlinear ablative hydrodynamics. The NIF shots will feature a new long-duration x-ray source prototyped at the Omega EP laser, in which multiple hohlraums are driven with UV light in series for 10 ns each and reradiate the energy as an extended x-ray pulse. The new source will be used to illuminate a science package with directional radiation mimicking a cluster of stars. The scaled Omega EP shots tested whether a multi-hohlraum concept is viable — whether earlier time hohlraums would degrade later time hohlraums by preheat or by ejecting ablated plumes that would deflect the later beams. The Omega EP shots illuminated three 2.8 mm long by 1.4 mm diameter Cu hohlraums for 10 ns each with 4.3 kJ per hohlraum. At NIF each hohlraum will be 4 mm long by 3 mm in diameter and will be driven with 80 kJ per hohlraum.

The National Ignition Facility (NIF) utilizes 192 high-energy laser beams focused with enough power and precision on a hydrogen-filled spherical, cryogenic target to potentially initiate a fusion reaction. NIF has been operational for six years and during that time, thousands of successful laser firings or shots have been executed. Critical instrument measurements and camera images are carefully recorded for each shot. The result is a massive and complex database or ‘big data’ archive that can be used to investigate the state of the laser system at any point in its history or to locate and track trends in the laser operation over time. In this study, the optical light throughput for more than 1600 NIF shots for each of the 192 main laser beams and 48 quads was measured over a three year period from January 2009 to October 2012. The purpose was to verify that the variation in the transmission of light through the optics performed within design expectations during this time period. Differences between average or integrated intensity from images recorded by the input sensor package (ISP) and by the output sensor package (OSP) in the NIF beam-line were examined. A metric is described for quantifying changes in the integrated intensity measurements. Changes in light transmission from the NIF main laser over the three year time-frame are presented.

The National Ignition Facility (NIF) is a stadium-sized facility containing a 192-beam, 1.8 MJ, 500-TW, 351-nm laser system together with a 10-m diameter target chamber with room for many target diagnostics. NIF is the world’s largest laser experimental system, providing a national center to study inertial confinement fusion and the physics of matter at extreme energy densities and pressures. A computational system, the Laser Performance Operations Model (LPOM) has been developed that automates the laser setup process, and accurately predict laser energetics. LPOM uses diagnostic feedback from previous NIF shots to maintain accurate energetics models (gains and losses), as well as links to operational databases to provide ‘as currently installed’ optical layouts for each of the 192 NIF beamlines. LPOM deploys a fully integrated laser physics model, the Virtual Beamline (VBL), in its predictive calculations in order to meet the accuracy requirements of NIF experiments, and to provide the ability to determine the damage risk to optical elements throughout the laser chain. LPOM determines the settings of the injection laser system required to achieve the desired laser output, provides equipment protection, and determines the diagnostic setup. Additionally, LPOM provides real-time post shot data analysis and reporting for each NIF shot. The LPOM computation system is designed as a multi-host computational cluster (with 200 compute nodes, providing the capability to run full NIF simulations fully parallel) to meet the demands of both the controls systems within a shot cycle, and the NIF user community outside of a shot cycle.

A low contrast nanosecond laser pulse with relatively low intensity (3 × 10¹⁶ W cm^–2) was used to enhance the yield of induced nuclear reactions in advanced solid targets. In particular the "ultraclean" proton-boron fusion reaction, producing energetic alpha-particles without neutron generation, was chosen. A spatially well-defined layer of boron dopants in a hydrogen-enriched silicon substrate was used as target. The combination of the specific target geometry and the laser pulse temporal shape allowed enhancing the yield of alpha-particles up to 10⁹ per steradian, i.e 100 times higher than previous experimental achievements. Moreover the alpha particle stream presented a clearly peaked angular and energy distribution, which make this secondary source attractive for potential applications. This result can be ascribed to the interaction of the long laser pre-pulse with the target and to the optimal target geometry and composition.

The multiple-pulse driver line (MPD) provides on-shot co-propagation of two separate pulse shapes in all 60 OMEGA beams at the Laboratory for Laser Energetics (LLE). The two co-propagating pulse shapes would typically be (1) a series of 100-ps “picket” pulses followed by (2) a longer square or shaped “drive” pulse. Smoothing by spectral dispersion (SSD), which increases the laser bandwidth, can be applied to either one of the two pulse shapes. Therefore, MPD allows for dynamic bandwidth reduction, where the bandwidth is applied only to the picket portion of a pulse shape. Since the use of SSD decreases the efficiency of frequency conversion from the IR to the UV, dynamic bandwidth reduction provides an increase in the drive-pulse energy. The design of the MPD required careful consideration of beam combination as well as the minimum pulse separation for two pulses generated by two separate sources. A new combined-pulse-shape diagnostic needed to be designed and installed after the last grating used for SSD. This new driver-line flexibility is built into the OMEGA front end as one component of the initiative to mitigate cross-beam energy transfer on target and to demonstrate hydro-equivalent ignition on the OMEGA laser at LLE.

The National Ignition Facility (NIF) at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory is the first of a kind megajoule-class laser with 192 beams capable of delivering over 1.8 MJ and 500TW of 351nm light [1], [2]. It has been commissioned and operated since 2009 to support a wide range of missions including the study of inertial confinement fusion, high energy density physics, material science, and laboratory astrophysics. In order to advance our understanding, and enable short-pulse multi-frame radiographic experiments of dense cores of cold material, the generation of very hard x-rays above 50 keV is necessary. X-rays with such characteristics can be efficiently generated with high intensity laser pulses above 10¹⁷ W/cm² [3]. The Advanced Radiographic Capability (ARC) [4] which is currently being commissioned on the NIF will provide eight, 1 ps to 50 ps, adjustable pulses with up to 1.7 kJ each to create x-ray point sources enabling dynamic, multi-frame x-ray backlighting. This paper will provide an overview of the ARC system and report on the laser performance tests conducted with a stretched-pulse up to the main laser output and their comparison with the results of our laser propagation codes.

Control of irradiance distribution in complex optical systems of modern high-power lasers is of great importance to increase efficiency of optical techniques used to reach high power levels. For example, flat-top or super-Gaussian irradiance profiles are optimum for amplification in MOPA lasers and for reduction of thermal effects in crystals of solid-state ultra-short pulse lasers when pumping by an external multimode laser. Specific requirements to beam shaping optics in these laser systems are providing variable irradiance distributions, saving of beam consistency and flatness of phase front, capability to work with TEM00 and multimode lasers, resistance to high peak power radiation. Among various refractive and diffractive beam shaping techniques only refractive field mapping beam shapers like Shaper meet these requirements. The operational principle of these devices presumes almost lossless transformation of laser beam irradiance from Gaussian to flat-top, super-Gauss or inverse-Gauss through controlled wavefront manipulation inside a beam shaper using lenses with smooth optical surfaces. This paper will describe some design basics of refractive beam shapers of the field mapping type and optical layouts of their applying in optical systems of high-power lasers. Examples of real implementations and experimental results will be presented as well.

Accurate modeling of thermal, mechanical and optical processes is important for achieving reliable, high-performance high energy lasers such as those at the National Ignition Facility [1] (NIF). The need for this capability is even more critical for high average power, high repetition rate applications. Modeling the effects of stresses and temperature fields on optical properties allows for optimal design of optical components and more generally of the architecture of the laser system itself. Stresses change the indices of refractions and induce inhomogeneities and anisotropy. We present a modern, integrated analysis tool that efficiently produces reliable results that are used in our laser propagation tools such as VBL [5]. COMBINE is built on and supplants the existing legacy tools developed for the previous generations of lasers at LLNL but also uses commercially available mechanical finite element codes ANSYS or COMSOL (including computational fluid dynamics). The COMBINE code computes birefringence and wave front distortions due to mechanical stresses on lenses and slabs of arbitrary geometry. The stresses calculated typically originate from mounting support, vacuum load, gravity, heat absorption and/or attending cooling. Of particular importance are the depolarization and detuning effects of nonlinear crystals due to thermal loading. Results are given in the form of Jones matrices, depolarization maps and wave front distributions. An incremental evaluation of Jones matrices and ray propagation in a 3D mesh with a stress and temperature field is performed. Wavefront and depolarization maps are available at the optical aperture and at slices within the optical element. The suite is validated, user friendly, supported, documented and amenable to collaborative development. * COMBINE stands for Code for Opto-Mechanical Birefringence Integrated Numerical Evaluations.

The current automation of image-based alignment of NIF high energy laser beams is providing the capability of executing multiple target shots per day. An important aspect of performing multiple shots in a day is to reduce additional time spent aligning specific beams due to perturbations in those beam images. One such alignment is beam centration through the second and third harmonic generating crystals in the final optics assembly (FOA), which employs two retro-reflecting corner cubes to represent the beam center. The FOA houses the frequency conversion crystals for third harmonic generation as the beams enters the target chamber. Beam-to-beam variations and systematic beam changes over time in the FOA corner-cube images can lead to a reduction in accuracy as well as increased convergence durations for the template based centroid detector. This work presents a systematic approach of maintaining FOA corner cube centroid templates so that stable position estimation is applied thereby leading to fast convergence of alignment control loops. In the matched filtering approach, a template is designed based on most recent images taken in the last 60 days. The results show that new filter reduces the divergence of the position estimation of FOA images.

Design, activation, and operation of large laser systems rely on accurate, efficient, user-friendly simulation of laser performance. At the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, the principle tool for this simulation over the past ten years has been the VBL, an outgrowth of the Prop code that uses the same text-file input grammar and is closely integrated with the Laser Performance Operations Model (LPOM). Here, we describe the physics capabilities of this code, its user interface, and our plans for near-term future developments.

In order to set the shape of the focal spot, high power lasers for inertial confinement fusion have a phase plate at the end of the chain. This produces hot spots that can be avoided by the use of optical smoothing. Smoothing consists either in reducing the number of high-energy hot spots by splitting the focal spot energy on two orthogonal states of polarization or in moving the speckle pattern sufficiently fast so that the focal spot seems more homogeneous over time. In the latter case, the spectrum is broadened by a temporal phase modulation and dispersed with a grating. However, because of propagation impairments (filtering functions, chromatic dispersion, frequency conversion,...), part of the frequency modulation is converted into detrimental amplitude modulation. This is called FM-AM conversion. Its impact on smoothing performance is considered here. Three main parameters may be affected: power fluctuations of the focal spot, size of the speckle hot spots (autocorrelation function) and dynamic of the evolution of the spatial contrast of the focal spot versus time. We show that depending on the features of the FM-AM conversion (frequency content of AM, type of filtering function) either one or more of these parameters may be affected. As a matter of fact, a low frequency AM induces power fluctuations while higher frequency AM induces variation of the autocorrelation function. Moreover, as opposed to an amplitude-filtering function, chromatic dispersion will not change the power spectral density of the pulse and thus the dynamic of the contrast.

The National Ignition Facility (NIF) at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory is a 192-beam pulsed laser system for high energy density physics experiments. Sophisticated diagnostics have been designed around key performance metrics to achieve ignition. The Velocity Interferometer System for Any Reflector (VISAR) is the primary diagnostic for measuring the timing of shocks induced into an ignition capsule. The VISAR system utilizes three streak cameras; these streak cameras are inherently nonlinear and require warp corrections to remove these nonlinear effects. A detailed calibration procedure has been developed with National Security Technologies (NSTec) and applied to the camera correction analysis in production. However, the camera nonlinearities drift over time affecting the performance of this method. An in-situ fiber array is used to inject a comb of pulses to generate a calibration correction in order to meet the timing accuracy requirements of VISAR. We develop a robust algorithm for the analysis of the comb calibration images to generate the warp correction that is then applied to the data images. Our algorithm utilizes the method of thin-plate splines (TPS) to model the complex nonlinear distortions in the streak camera data. In this paper, we focus on the theory and implementation of the TPS warp-correction algorithm for the use in a production environment.

Pulse contrast is an important parameter for ultrafast pulses. It shall be 10⁸ or higher in order to avoid effect from noise before main pulse. Diagnostics with cross-correlation can achieve high temporal resolution such as ~7fs. Cross-correlation has advantage in pulse contrast measurement than autocorrelation because it can distinguish noise before or after main pulse. High dynamic range is also essential in pulse contrast measurement. Cross-correlation signal from a single shot is converted into a signal series through fiber array, which can be analyzed by a set of a PMT and an oscilloscope. Noise from nonlinear crystal and scatter needs decrease to improve dynamic range. And pulse power is also discussed in pulse contrast experiments. Time delay τ is generated by travel stage in measurement for repetition pulses. Then energy instability will generate error in this measurement. In measurement for single shot pulse, time delay τ is generated by slant angle of beams. The scanning procession is completed with thousands parts of beam section within a single shot, and error will generated from no uniformity in near field. Performance test of pulse contrast measurement is introduced in subsequent sections. Temporal resolution is testified by self-calibration. Dynamic range is judged by a parallel flat. At last pulse contrast of petawatt laser is diagnosed by a single shot cross-correlator with high confidence. The ratio is 10^-6 at 50ps before main pulse, and 10^-4 at 10ps before main pulse.