Development of low-coherence high-power laser drivers for inertial confinement fusion

The use of low-coherence light is expected to be one of the effective ways to suppress or even eliminate the laser–plasma instabilities that arise in attempts to achieve inertial confinement fusion.In this paper,a review of low-coherence high-power laser drivers and related key techniques is first presented.Work at typical low-coherence laser facilities,including Gekko XII,PHEBUS,Pharos III,and Kanal-2 is described.The many key techniques that are used in the research and development of low-coherence laser drivers are described and analyzed,including low-coherence source generation,amplification,harmonic conversion,and beam smoothing of low-coherence light.Then,recent progress achieved by our group in research on a broadband low-coherence laser driver is presented.During the development of our low-coherence high-power laser facility,we have proposed and implemented many key techniques for working with low-coherence light,including source generation,efficient amplification and propagation,harmonic conversion,beam smoothing,and precise beam control.Based on a series of technological breakthroughs,a kilojoule low-coherence laser driver named Kunwu with a coherence time of only 300 fs has been built,and the first round of physical experiments has been completed.This high-power laser facility provides not only a demonstration and verification platform for key techniques and system integration of a low-coherence laser driver,but also a new type of experimental platform for research into,for example,high-energy-density physics and,in particular,laser–plasma interactions.

100 Hertz frame-rate switching threedimensional orbital angular momentum multiplexing holography via cross convolution

The orbital angular momentum(OAM)of light has been implemented as an information carrier in OAM holography.Holographic information can be multiplexed in theoretical unbounded OAM channels,promoting the applications of optically addressable dynamic display and high-security optical encryption.However,the frame-rate of the dynamic extraction of the information reconstruction process in OAM holography is physically determined by the switching speed of the incident OAM states,which is currently below 30 Hz limited by refreshing rate of the phase-modulation spatial light modulator(SLM).Here,based on a cross convolution with the spatial frequency of the OAM-multiplexing hologram,the spatial frequencies of an elaborately-designed amplitude distribution,namely amplitude decoding key,has been adopted for the extraction of three-dimensional holographic information encoded in a specific OAM information channel.We experimentally demonstrated a dynamic extraction frame rate of 100 Hz from an OAM multiplexing hologram with 10 information channels indicated by individual OAM values from-50 to 50.The new concept of cross convolution theorem can even provide the potential of parallel reproduction and distribution of information encoded in many OAM channels at various positions which boosts the capacity of information processing far beyond the traditional decoding methods.Thus,our results provide a holographic paradigm for high-speed 3D information processing,paving an unprecedented way to achieve the high-capacity short-range optical communication system.

Phyllotaxis bionics for vortex nanosieves

eLight,1(5),2021 https://doi.org/10.1186/s43593-021-00005-9 Simultaneous generation of multiple optical vortex(OV)lies at the heart of the application for orbital angular momentum(OAM)multiplexing both in classical and quantum domains.Previous structure with segmented or interleaved functional sub-areas in a single nano-device has been developed at the cost of its compactness and channel capacity.Back-to-nature design inspired by the spiral phyllotaxis pattern in this work offers a fresh way to fabricate a truly space-degenerated nanoscale multipleOVs-generator,namely vortex nanosieves.