考虑钕玻璃放大器增益特性的光谱色散匀滑系统性能研究

Performance of smoothing by spectral dispersion with consideration of the gain characteristic of Nd:glass amplifier

采用数值方法研究了钕玻璃放大器的增益特性对高功率激光系统中光谱色散匀滑单元性能的影响.分析结果表明,入射光中心波长与放大器增益曲线中心波长不一致时,焦斑强度分布会受到一定的影响,且该影响随放大倍数增大趋于明显,而两个波长一致时,强度分布变化较小.靶面焦斑整体的辐照均匀性则主要取决于经过相位调制后的激光束的带宽,放大器的增益特性对其空间功率谱及均匀性无明显的影响.所得结论为光谱色散匀滑单元在激光系统中的实际应用提供了重要的理论参考.

A key issue in developing a high-power laser driver, which can be used for inertial confinement fusion and laser produced plasma experiments, is to obtain uniform irradiation on the target surface, thus a number of spatial or temporal techniques have been proposed for laser beam smoothing. A scheme combining a lens array with the technique of smoothing by spectral dispersion （SSD） is being explored in the SG-II Laser Facility located in Shanghai Institute of Optics and Fine Mechanics. As the laser system involves a variety of optical elements, their influences have to be considered in the implementation of such a scheme. The Nd：glass amplifier is one of the most important parts of the system, and the phase-modulated laser beam will propagate through it along the long light path when SSD is employed. In this paper, the performance of uniform irradiation of the target pattern is studied based on two-dimensional simulations when the gain characteristic of the amplifier is taken into account. The major factors, such as the small signal gain profile of the amplifier, the amplification factor, the bandwidth of the phase-modulated laser beam and the difference between the central wavelength of the laser and the central wavelength of the amplifier gain curve, are analyzed in detail. The numerical results show that when the central wavelength of the incident beam is different from the central wavelength of the amplifier gain curve, intensity distribution of the target pattern will be affected to a degree depending on the amplification factor; while these two wavelengths are very close to or identical with each other, variation in the intensity distribution is trivial. The symmetry of the phase-modulated laser spectrum will be destroyed due to the gain characteristic of the amplifier, especially when the bandwidth is relatively wide. However, the slight asymmetry does not result in significant influence on the spatial power spectrum nor uniformity of the target pattern, even in the case where the central wavelength of the incident beam is different from that of the amplifier gain curve. The reasons would be 1 the gain curve of the amplifier is actually quite flat within the laser bandwidth, and 2 with the technique of SSD, all spectral components contribute to the target intensity distribution within an average time. The analysis indicates that the performance of uniform irradiation of the target pattern depends mainly on the bandwidth of the phase-modulated laser beam. A wider bandwidth can always generate better irradiation when it is within a certain range, say no more than 0.3 nm, but beyond this range, the nonuniformity tends to remain at a level about 0.25–0.3. Multistage Nd：glass amplifiers will be employed in the practical laser driver, and the case investigated in this paper involves only one stage for simplicity. The conclusion obtained in this paper is important for implementing the technique of SSD in the laser system.